James Lindsay is Not a Friend

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All right, let's get started today. Happy Friday, everybody. We made it through another week.

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Well, just about. It's Friday morning. And, well, I hope God blesses your weekend. Let's talk more about this

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Satan statue as there's more developments. Apparently, a

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Christian man who's, I guess he's military and may have run for some kind of an office at some point, decided to knock it down and to chop its head off.

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And, you know, I, for one, when I saw this happen, a little, you know, like the

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Indian in that commercial, a little tear came to my eye, you know. But this was a tear of joy. That one was a tear of disappointment and sadness.

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But a little tear, just like this. It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Very, very good stuff to see.

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And so that's great. And, of course, he's going to be facing charges for, I believe it's like criminal mischief or something like that, which, you know, hopefully that case goes well.

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Hopefully, you know, the governor of Iowa pardons him because this is obviously not a real crime.

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And that's what I hope will happen. I don't think so, though. Because here's the thing, this whole situation could have been avoided.

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Like, we didn't have to have, we didn't have to wait until someone, you know, knocked it down and beheaded it.

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It could have just been rejected at the outset, number one. Or number two, like I said in a short the other day, it's like, at least lie to me.

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You know what I mean? Pretend like you're going to do everything in your political power to prevent this from ever happening again.

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You know, like if somebody would have said that, if just one person would have said that in a forceful kind of a way,

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I think we could have avoided all this mess. There definitely are multiple options to address something like this.

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You know what I mean? And so I'm not saying that knocking it down and chopping it set off is wrong, but it's not the only option.

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You know, there's other things that could have been happening. And so, you know, yeah, we could have had a political solution to this, but it didn't happen.

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And there's another opportunity for the governor to do what governors are there for, to do what's right.

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So we'll see what happens with that. But more likely he'll face trial, more likely he'll be convicted.

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And we'll see what happens. God be with him. Now, what I wanted to talk about today was, there's a couple of things, but number one,

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James Lindsay, I've said this many times, but I feel like it bears repeating.

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James Lindsay is not your friend. He is not a friend of the church.

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That should be obvious on the face of it as he's an atheist, but he's not your friend and he doesn't act like your friend.

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That's the thing. It's not just that he's an atheist, although that would be enough. He doesn't act like a friend.

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So he saw the statue fall down and he started crying like a little girl about Christian fascism or things, who knows what he's talking about.

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Here's what his tweet said. He said, And I guess the

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Christian fascism is represented by this man tearing down the

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Satan statue. And so predictably, James Lindsay is all upset about this.

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You know, of course, the Satan statue must remain, or if it doesn't remain, at least like, you know, it's got to be even

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Stevens and stuff like that. Just really, really just weak, you know, limp -wristed, nothing

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Christian about it, which, of course, you can't expect him to act like a Christian because he's not one.

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He's against Christ. He hates the Lord. So, of course, he hates what is good. And so he's whining here and stuff like that.

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And so I just, you know, I just, you know, innocently retweeted this. And I put my little picture where I have, you know, my grin and it says my heart is full.

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Just a bit. That's all it said. Just my grin and my heart is full. Because really, this stuff does make me feel warm on the inside.

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To see James Lindsay seething about Christians taking any kind of action.

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I love that. It makes me feel very nice on the inside. So that's what I did. And I got blocked for that.

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So apparently, you know, I've said a lot of wild stuff to James Lindsay and I never got blocked.

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Apparently, though, when his idol falls down with that. Whoa. Well, then that's that's the end of that.

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You know what I mean? I can't even like my my eyes cannot fall upon your tweets anymore. So I thought that was funny.

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I thought that was funny. And here's the thing. Like, I know there's a lot of Christian classical liberals out there.

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And so, of course, they're going to like these kinds of takes. But the reality is this is not he's not friendly to the church.

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You know what I mean? He likes to pretend like he's friendly to the church. But he's not friendly to the church. And and this is the thing, like this is this is the the

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James Lindsay do nothing approach. Or at least if you're going to do something, just make sure that Christianity is just one option of many.

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This is not our mission, guys. Like this has nothing to do with with baptizing the nations and and teaching them to observe everything

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Christ commands. This has nothing to do with that mission. Here's what he says. He says the same approach that was removed that was used for removing stones with the

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Ten Commandments from the Capitol buildings would have removed this, too. I actually think it's kind of baller that it got knocked over.

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No, you don't, James, please. Let's not let's not pretend you were crying like a little girl. I actually think it was kind of baller that it got knocked over, but it could have easily be challenged challenged.

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First Amendment cuts hard if you use it. Shrinking it seems foolish. So do you see what he's saying here? He's saying there could have been a political approach to removing the the the

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Satan statue. But if you if you notice, he said it's the same approach that's used to remove the

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Ten Commandments statue. So so he's of the opinion. And I think that the people that put this statue up are probably of the same opinion, where the reason we're putting this

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Satan statue is so that you'll remove the Ten Commandments statue. It's a tactic. You know, they don't really worship

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Satan, but they just want to keep Christianity out of politics. And James Lindsay, the great strategist, is saying, yeah, definitely, that's what you should do.

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You know, just no statues at all. No, no, no, nothing. No, we shouldn't honor Christ in the halls of Congress, nor shall we honor

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Satan. And here's the strategy. You know, use our tactics that we took Christ out of our politics.

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Use those same tactics to remove Satan out of politics. You see, this is a perspective that is not compatible with Christianity, because the book, the book says that the civil governing authority is a deacon of God, is a servant of God.

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James Lindsay doesn't believe that. And so, of course, his strategies, all of them are designed to remove that reality from the equation.

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But of course, you can't remove that reality from the equation. And Christians ought to know better than to listen to James Lindsay about that.

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And so having the Ten Commandments on the wall of, you know, a courtroom or a

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Capitol building or something like that, that's good. That's fine. That's a good reminder.

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You should have those in your face all the time if you are going to be serving as God's deacon, as God's revenger.

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Because when you are in the civil government, that is what you are. And so to have a reminder like that, you should have a

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Bible on your desk as well. To have a reminder of that is good, and it's good for you, and it's good for the people.

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And so that is fine, but the Baphomet statue is not good. And so James Lindsay's like, see, you should treat

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Satan the way you treat Christ when it comes to the civil realm.

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Exclude him. Exclude him. James Lindsay is not your friend.

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I mean, he's just not. I don't know how else to say it. It is not good for you to have a civil governing authority that does not self -consciously act as God's deacon, held to account by God according to what was written, according to what is good.

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And no amount of natural law can overturn what God has designed to be good.

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See, natural law is good. I like natural law, but the thing is, it's too often that natural law is used by weak

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Christians, because a lot of strong Christians use natural law too, and that's good. But natural law is malleable, and so you'll see these ridiculous arguments that somehow say natural law and the revealed law, they're totally different, and actually the natural law can overturn the revealed law.

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And that's insane. That's insane. Now, this is not a surprise from James Lindsay.

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I mean, this is his perspective. This is what he believes should be true, and I think if you're one of these

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Christians that thinks, well, Christians should have an influence on government, a lot of people say that. In fact, I would argue pretty much every

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Christian says that. Christians should have an influence on government, but governments shouldn't be self -consciously

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Christian. I would argue that what you're saying is indistinguishable from what James Lindsay says here, where it's like, yeah, you know, it's okay if you're a

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Christian in the government. Just don't be—you can't be dogmatic about it.

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You're just one voice among many. I mean, we've got to make room for Jews. We've got to make room for Muslims. We've got to make room for Hindus and all that kind of stuff.

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And the reality is, no, we don't. Because Hindus, Jews, Muslims, they don't know how to serve as God's deacon, as God's revenger.

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Christians do. It's as simple as that. It's as simple as that.

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This is one of these, like, tactics. And, you know, James is always talking about, you know, the tactics for how they're going to destroy us and stuff like that.

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And honestly, I think a lot of what James does is telling on himself. It's a lot of projection.

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Because here, he gives up the game here. He wants it to be like this. And this myth of neutrality, where it's like, see, you use the same tactics to get

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Satan out of politics as you use to get Christianity out of politics. They should both be out of politics. Like, this is one of these tactics that, it's just, it has the fantasy of neutrality, but neutrality is completely off the table.

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That's not one of our options. God hasn't allowed that to be. You're either serving him or you're against him.

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Christ has said that. The government is either serving self -consciously as God's deacon, his revenger, or they're against him.

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Those are the options available to us. And there's different ways to be against him. But ultimately, you're against him.

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If you're not doing what he says for you to do. It's as simple as that.

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It reminds me, we've been talking about the purge a little bit this week. Well, there was one movie, The Purge Election Year, I think it was, where there's a woman running for president and she's against the purge.

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And she, you know, because I guess her family had died in the purge or whatever. And so she's against the purge and she's gaining a lot of momentum.

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And she's saying, oh, you know, the purge is about all about killing poor people because, you know, the government is exempt from the purge and all this stuff.

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And so the new founding fathers, like the purge people, they say, ah, ah, we hear you.

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We hear your complaints. From this day forward, or at least this year, the government officials won't be immune from the purge.

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So now everybody's fair game in the purge. And so, you know, it's a political ploy because what they're really attempting to do is they want to kill her.

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So now she's no longer exempt, but they're pretending, no, it's all about us not being exempt. We're one of you.

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And really what she's trying to do is they're trying to kill the woman running against him. It's a ploy.

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It's a tactic. Because there was no neutrality there. The purge people were in power.

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And so they pretended, OK, now everybody's even Steven. And that's not really true. They were going to kill her.

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And they had a whole plan in place about this and things like that. So it's a fake neutrality. It's a fake neutrality.

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A lot of people are also saying that this is another thing I saw. I don't think James said this, so I don't want to credit this to him.

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But I think he has said something like this before, if I'm not mistaken, but I'm not 100 percent.

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But they're saying, hey, this satanic temple thing, this is all just trolling. This is just trolling.

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You know, they're trolling. And the whole purpose of their trolling is so that you will react and take the statute down.

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This is just they're just they're just testing you. They're tempting you to do this. So that way they can go and get and kick

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Christ out of more stuff, you know, and say, see, we're going to get rid of the Ten Commandments because, see, look at the violence it leads to.

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It's just trolling. It's tempting so that so you're just taking the bait. You're just taking the bait.

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They set up this little sting operation and now you're taking the bait. And pretty soon we're going to be controlled by the woke, the woke people.

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Look, I'm very much against woke people. I mean, obviously, but but that doesn't mean you shouldn't act right.

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Just because the woke people want you to act doesn't mean you shouldn't. Doesn't mean you should either, but doesn't mean you shouldn't.

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And this is akin to I was trying to think of a good example of this where someone's just kind of testing you, you know, tempting you.

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It's kind of like a like a troll almost. And here's an example that I thought of. And imagine yourself.

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I mean, I know in my audience, you've got good people in my audience. Nobody would ever end up in jail or prison in my in my audience.

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But I've been to jail. Anyway, you know, you go to prison or jail or whatever.

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And, you know, you know, you've never been there before. And everyone there can kind of sense you've never been there before.

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You know, people are pretty smart at reading people. And and somebody comes up to you and and, you know, they grab.

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I don't know. You have a candy bar on your on your bed. And they say, you know, let me hold this for a minute. And they just grab it.

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They just they just grab it. They don't even wait for you to say yes. They just grab it. Take your Snickers bar. You know, it's not really a big deal.

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Not really a big deal. Just a Snickers bar. But what they're doing in that moment is they're testing you.

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They're testing. You have options there, right? Because if you were in the if you were just in the world and somebody stole your

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Snickers bar, you know, and you're just in regular, you know, situation and all that kind of stuff, you might just let it go.

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I mean, it's just a Snickers bar, right? Who cares? But in prison, you're in there with a bunch of sharks, a bunch of predators, a bunch of degenerates.

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And so the rules kind of the wisdom of the situation might change.

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Because here's what they're doing. What they're doing is they're saying, okay, will he defend himself in this in for the small infraction, the small infraction, took this

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Snickers bar. And if you don't, in the real world, nothing might happen. After that, you might never see that person again who stole your

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Snickers bar. But in there, if you don't do anything about it, the next thing that happens is going to be a little bit more intense, a little bit worse.

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And before you know it, you know, they're going to take everything from you. And I don't just mean stuff, if you catch my drift.

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And so wisdom dictates maybe a different action in prison than would be required, you know, at the convenience store or something like that.

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And so just because something is trolling doesn't mean you shouldn't act. Now, you shouldn't overreact, but you shouldn't act.

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That's not what it means. You know, when people are testing you and tempting you, there are many situations where you need to act, even though that's exactly what they want you to do.

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You need to actually act and show you have some backbone. And I think this situation very well could be situation like that.

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No, we do actually, Christians actually do have the ability to act. And we will act.

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And so even though this is a small thing, we will act. This could have been avoided.

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You know, again, if this Governor Dunwell or Senator Dunwell or whatever representative, if he would have said something with a little bit of teeth, yeah, you know, this is unacceptable.

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We are not, this does not represent Iowa. Absolutely not. And we are going to do everything in our power.

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Give us some time. We're going to study this issue. We're going to do everything in our power to make sure this never happens again.

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I think that would have been effective, at least in the moment. And then you got to actually go and do it.

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You know, you can't just say you got to go and do it. And I don't think it would stop the satanic temple.

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I'm not saying that it would, but it would require them to actually act and work a little bit more.

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And if you defend yourself over the Snickers bar in prison, that doesn't mean that everything's going to stop, but you're no longer like the lowest guy in the totem pole.

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The one that you know for a fact won't defend himself because that's what they're looking for. They're looking for people that won't defend themselves so that when they go out and they get a hankering for a cup of noodles, they're going to go to the easiest possible way where there's no chance of fight back.

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There's no chance of getting hurt. There's no chance of getting written up. They're going to go to that person because it's the easiest possible person to steal from.

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That's what they're looking for. And likewise, these satanic, you know,

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LARPers out there, they're looking for the easy marks. That's what they're looking for because nobody wants to work hard if they don't have to.

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I mean, they will work hard. But that's the thing. You make them work hard. You make them get their ducks in a row. You make them spend more resources on doing this kind of stuff.

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Some kind of fight is required. And that's why this guy, this Iowa governor, should absolutely pardon this guy.

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That's right. You're going to put up your satanic statues? Well, you're going to have to try a little bit harder. In fact, we're going to pardon this guy because he did the right thing.

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And then we're going to get to work to make sure that politically and administratively and operationally, you won't be able to do this kind of thing again.

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Go find your own land and put your own satanic statue there. And, you know, God help you kind of thing. That's the thing.

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Like there's just a lack of wisdom. And people say, you know, this guy doesn't know what time it is.

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That guy doesn't know what time it is. I really like that meme because it comes straight out of Ecclesiastes. You know what

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I mean? There's a time for different things. There's a time for different action. And obviously context depends or determines what time it is for what thing.

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And people might not agree. You know what I mean? People might have different opinions on what time it is. I mean, depending on where you live, if somebody steals your candy bar, it might be time to go to war over that candy bar.

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Where I live in New Hampshire, I mean, you know, it's really not that big a deal. But if you live in the hood or something like that, it might be a similar situation to in jail where if you don't have, if you don't get respect, if you don't defend what's yours, even if it's just a freaking candy bar, you're going to get eaten by these sharks.

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There's different situations for different people. I see idiots. I mean, these are idiots out there.

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They say, did you see Paul tear down the statues in Greece? Paul didn't do that.

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And it's like, I mean, can you just, can we try just thinking for a minute, just thinking through what you're saying for just a minute.

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Can you find, I mean, I remember when I was in elementary school, I actually had a decent education to be honest.

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I always make fun of public school and I always make fun of myself for going to public school. I had a decent education, decent.

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I remember learning about comparing and contrasting. Do you remember that? I remember what grade it was, but comparing and contrasting.

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That is so important, man. I mean, we just do it kind of without thinking it through, but I feel like a lot of people are very bad at comparing and contrasting.

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Because if you compare and contrast the situation that Paul found himself in Athens, Greece, and the situations we find ourselves in, in Iowa, I think you'll find that there, while there are some similarities, there's a freaking lot of differences, a lot of differences that would maybe determine

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Paul wouldn't knock down the statues at the whatever temple that he was at. And it could be a good idea for a

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Christian to knock over the Satan statue in the Iowa State Capitol. And they're very similar in some ways, but the context and the situations that we find ourselves in are very different also.

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You know, you don't go to war that you can't win. That's one difference.

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I mean, you know, obviously in Athens, there's really no path forward for Paul. You know what I mean? If he were to do that,

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I mean, I don't know what would have happened to him. I mean, probably been executed or something like that. But that wasn't a very smart thing for him to do.

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And he had a different mission. He had something else in mind that he was trying to do. But even here in Iowa, you know,

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I'm sure this guy kind of weighed the pros and cons of decapitating the statue.

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And, you know, worst case scenario, okay, he goes, maybe he goes to spend some time in jail or something. Maybe he gets a fine.

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Maybe he gets probation. I mean, who knows? Best case scenario, this serves his purposes.

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And, you know, assuming his purposes are in line with God's purposes, then, you know, he's good to go.

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He's good to go. He doesn't really risk a whole lot. And symbolically, it could be very meaningful.

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This is the thing, like, there's such a lack of knowing what time it is.

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I mean, everyone thinks that, like, Christianity is just like this peanut butter and it's the same for everybody.

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You spread it on everybody and it becomes the same thing. I saw some woman say something like,

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I wish you would have invited the satanic temple to dinner. Instead of knocking down their statue,

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I wish you would have just invited them to dinner and told them about the gospel. You know what

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I wish, lady? I wish women weren't allowed on the internet. That's what I wish. Doesn't mean I'm going to get it. But that's not the thing.

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The solution to everything is not invite them over to dinner and spread, you know, and spread the gospel by inviting them to dinner and just being polite about things.

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That's a very good thing. I'm not saying that's not good, but it's not the solution to everything. If a guy comes into my, this is my biggest problem with a guy like John Piper, because that guy doesn't know what time it is either.

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I mean, he's always had this problem. He doesn't know what freaking time it is. When a guy comes into your house and is trying to hurt your wife and all of that kind of stuff, the solution freaking isn't invite him to dinner and share the gospel with him.

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The solution is do what you have to do to eliminate the threat. And then if you want to, and he still lives, you can share the gospel with him.

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Go right ahead. Go right ahead. But the first priority, it's not the time for that. It's not time for having a cup of soup.

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The time is to eliminate the threat. Anyway, you know, let me retract what

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I said. I think that women should be allowed on the internet as long as their husbands are okay with it. Oh man.

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You know, I just imagined that being clipped. Indie Robo doesn't think women should be allowed on the internet.

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I can imagine what someone could do with that clip. But guess what? I don't care. There you go. I hope you found this helpful.

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James Lindsay is not your friend. Guys, you got to get this through your thick skull. James Lindsay is not a friend of the church.

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James Lindsay does not care about what's good for the nation. James Lindsay does not know what is good for the nation.