#18 UNDERSTANDING CHURCH, STATE, AND POLITICS + Dr. Mark Clark

Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the

Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the

Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our creator, better. Hey, hello, hello, everybody.

Thank you so much for listening. I am live on air with Dr. Mark Clark, who is a repeat guest.

I'm so excited to have you back, Dr. Clark. Everyone really enjoyed our last conversation about Daniel.

And if you haven't heard that episode, go back and check it out. It illuminates so many features of that book that you may or may not have skipped over.

And Dr. Clark, you did such a good job in really taking us through how Daniel is just the epitome of a good

Christian example in the wake of paganism, in the wake of being captured, in the wake of, you know, a lot of authority that might put you in a den of lions.

I know that I run into that at work a lot. So thank you so much for your last episode, and thanks for coming back.

How are you? I am doing well. It's good to see you. As I mentioned before we started this, I have a slight cold.

So if my voice gets crackly, just let me take sips of water and let everyone be patient with me today.

It's no problem at all. So you coming back was really just a follow up on the last conversation, because I think there is a little bit left to explore when it comes to political actions in today's times that we can glean from other passages of the

Bible beyond Daniel. And this was something that you as the expert, you know, you instigated this conversation.

A, you're a great guest. I'll always have you back on, especially for the UFOs. That is coming up next.

And we'll leave that on the table, what that means. We're having that conversation. No, I think when it comes to political authority, how to respect it, how to honor

God, how to honor yourself, and how to honor somebody you don't necessarily agree with, are we being a good

Christian by, you know, well, my Bible says this, and God's more important, or this is what my president says, do

I need to honor that? And so I think that this is very timely, just in the wake of a lot of elections, a lot of just,

I mean, in general, this isn't just political, this is it at work, you know, how do you respect those forms of authority you don't respect in a biblical way?

How can we show up as a Christian in these scenarios specifically? So why, why this, you know, let's, why are you interested in this topic?

Sure. Well, I think we talked about last time, you know, for almost 35 years, I was a professor of political science, but primarily national security studies.

My interest, you know, I became a Christian while I was in the Marine Corps, and I became fascinated with international politics, conflicts, wars.

So although I was a political scientist, my study wasn't so much American politics, or politics per se.

But it was about conflict. But I studied the book of Daniel early in my career.

And it really encouraged me, I actually taught it to a number of places, including

Hugh Ross, one of his classes for six weeks period. So what

I found is that it really enhanced my career while I was at Cal State University, San Bernardino.

Because Daniel was an example of a kind of person who respected authority, who had a very good work ethic, was righteous, not corrupt in any sense of the word.

And, you know, I realized early on in my career, there's going to be times that one, they didn't care for national security.

Okay, so national security was not a hot topic by a lot of professors. But being a Christian as well was also sort of a problem.

I think I mentioned last time, that I was a guest host for Hugh Ross, on his

TVN series called Reasons to Believe. And I got political heat for that. What are you doing mixing your faith and university?

And it was interesting, because the words of Jesus that helped me calm down, but I really, this is when

I realized Daniel was important. But the words of Jesus were, you know, blessed are you when they persecute you for my name's sake.

But it took me a second to realize that when I was being persecuted for my faith, or being harassed for that,

I realized this was a blessing from God, and I was able to be calm. Going into it,

I wasn't calm. You know, I was in the Marines, I used to box, you know, I'd like to fight. So part of this transformation process that Christianity is all about, is becoming more

Christlike. And Daniel modeled that for me. So yeah, so I think

Daniel, this whole study of Daniel, the whole idea of politics, how do we think about it? You know,

I've read a lot of political philosophy. I'm very conservative politically, at least on political philosophy.

But that that meaning of being conservative changes over time, what it would have been called classical liberal back in the 19th century.

They just flip -flop, really? Well, yeah, yeah, give us 10 years. So, but one of the things, and I know one of your kind of starting points on this is, do we have, and if you don't mind me doing this, how similar is today's politics to politics in previous years?

Before we jump into that, I just want to, one thing that you mentioned is church and state. And I always like to promote these things on Instagram before they go live.

And one person was like, Hey, I think you're reaching across, like, I think that's a reach for you to have a whole episode on what politics we should believe in biblically.

And of course, that's not what this episode is about. We're not going to tell you what you should believe, but I do think that it's a sensitive topic on how do we mix church and state.

And in this conversation, we're not trying to, we're trying to say, if you are Christian, this is how you should approach politics.

Correct? Do you think I'm covering it there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Because a lot of the questions that people have about it, they want specific answers to specific policy questions.

And that's not what the book of Daniel does. That's not what the Bible does. The Bible is not a book of politics.

It's a book of following God. It's a book about being transformed. It includes politics, but it's not the focus.

It's not a book on political philosophy per se. So yeah, so I would agree with you.

It's not, we're pointing out to Christians or people who claim to be

Christian, this is what Jesus calls us to do. This is what God calls us to do, how to behave.

I think the one area where we will get in trouble, but we have to hold the line is we have a very different moral view than the world at large about the value of life and about the sin of murder and things like that.

But that's not what we're going to talk about. We're not saying church and state, you have to believe this way.

In fact, if you look around the world today and you look throughout history, places where religion was too closely bound up with political authority, when the political authority started failing, people's faith in that belief system started failing.

Let me give you, yeah, let me give an example. In Iran, there's a lot of people becoming believers in Christ because the regime is so corrupt and it's in the name of Islam that they rule, but it is alienating a lot of people and it's failing.

And so a lot of people are turning to Christianity, to other belief systems because the identity of Islam, particular version of Islam, Shia Islam that Iran practices is so bound up with their state that again, when the regime fails or when it doesn't effectually effectuate good policies, people turn against the faith that it's wedded to it.

And that's true with ideology. It's true with the national church and Russian Orthodox.

Wow. So it's true throughout the world. So one reason why Western Christians and political leaders decided to have somewhat of a separation was to not have those two so intimately bound that the failure of one means the failure of the other, if that makes sense.

Yeah. If I'm understanding it correctly, the Bible should be used on how to conduct ourselves on an individual level, not to govern the masses based on the ideologies that the

Bible is a very individualistic book and how it applies to your specific life. And when you conduct difficult policies like immigration or abortion bans, it's not the

Bible is the one rule that's guiding that policy. It's how are you going to conduct yourself with people you disagree with fundamentally?

That is where the Christianity steps in. But when it comes to, you know, the enmeshment of ideologies with the government,

I'm hearing from you that in Iran, that it can, or it will, or already has failed because you essentially are placing your identity, your religious identity in a government system that is of this world versus of this

God. So when it inevitably will fail, you lose faith in a God that was never meant to be in that place.

So you start looking elsewhere. You've lost both essentially. Correct. And that's true. Yeah. So there's a lot to that, but I thought

I would throw that out because I think it's, yeah. Again, so what we look for, and you mentioned, and it's true that it's for us as individuals, but Christianity and faith from the scripture is really a community thing too.

It's not simply individual. What I mean by that is that's why we have churches in the

Old Testament synagogues or temple worship is that God saw that it was important for us to not do this on our own.

We do it with both with God, but with one another. So it's a very communal thing. And that right there is one of the fundamental differences between Christianity and politics.

And this is what transcends time, if I may segue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So politics,

Glenn Tinder wrote a book called The Political Meaning of Christianity. He's a Christian political scientist.

And he argued that the political physics of politics is about power, meaning the fundamental element that holds politics together is this rule versus ruled.

What basis is there rule? But if you look at Christian communities, there's this grace and peace and love.

It's a whole different basis. But political rule throughout history, whether you're talking the ancient world or the modern world, is about this thing called power, political power.

And that's the ability to influence or control others for the purpose of the community. And that transcends either city states, medieval monarchies, feudal monarchies, democratic countries, republics, communist states.

No matter what, power is still the basis for those governments, whatever kind they are.

And they've been that way throughout history. Even tribes, ancient tribals, and even modern tribes still have respected elders and they have an elder board, not a board, but a group of people that people follow.

They tend to follow the norms of that society. And it's quite interesting if you think about it, since the fall of man, in particular, since the fall of the

Tower of Babel, people have organized themselves into political groups all around the world.

So Aristotle, the political philosopher from ancient Greece, said men are, and he meant all human beings, political animals.

That is, beyond family and tribe, we look to organize our lives around something larger than us that provides more than simply what family can provide or even tribe.

It's community, it's education, it's culture, it's values, it's all that.

And I think he was at something. We are political animals in that we congregate in these groupings and we try to arrange for some kind of political arrangement, whatever kind, and they're all different kinds.

But again, fundamentally, it's based on power, unlike faith -based groups, particularly Christianity, which is a community based, one based on grace, love, and peace.

Wow. So you're, I mean, just to sum all of that up, what was happening 2 ,000 years ago and today, very similar.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's why the lesson is not outdated. It's not outdated. It differs in form slightly, but it's not outdated at all.

Really interesting. Yeah. I think that is, you know, and I think some people would disagree that some churches are based on power.

And unfortunately, I agree. But I do think that fundamentally in a perfect world and like overly

God -driven church, it is not about the power. It is not about the money being made or how much, you know, how much you can optimize or, you know, how popular is the pastor or the head priest.

It really is just about community and love. I totally agree with you. Yeah. And you're right.

I think what's funny, and we'll look at power, the dynamic of power a little bit later in this talk, but if power intrudes on a church, then the church becomes less than what it should be by far.

It's like the indicator. It's absolutely the indicator. If a pastor is unaccountable to a board or unaccountable to the congregation or people within it are unaccountable, there's no check or balance with that, then yeah, there's something that's alien to the nature of the community that's been intruding.

Now, having said that, we are all sinners. And so people love power.

And there's a reason why that is. And we'll talk about that in a little while. I think it'd be quite interesting. Just as a side note.

I mean, I think that you described some internal issues that are good indicators of kind of like the downfall of a church or, you know, what could be intruding in that piece.

But I think from like a layman's perspective, I don't know about the boards of any churches. I just go to church on Sunday.

And I hope that, you know, the pastor is a good guy, as good as he says. Are there any external indicators that maybe just a churchgoer could pick up on to be like, oh, this church is not going in the right direction.

I should maybe not invest as much in this community. Yeah, I think that's a good question.

I would say that there's a really good series that everyone should listen to. It's a podcast series by Christianity Today called

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. It was a church, a very large church in northern, it was in,

I think, in Seattle and then spread. And it had a huge group of followers all around. And it's very interesting.

You can see the arc of the church. And it started out with very much this, what we call the power paradox, the pastor being more reclusive, less accountable, using the church to sell his own books to get on the number one list, making people, being very demanding of people without a reciprocal relationship.

One of the things I like about the church that we go to is we belong as what we call covenant partners. They like the idea of not membership, like Costco membership.

I pay a fee and I get benefits. They argue that it's a partnership and that here's what we as the elders and pastors do.

Here's what we expect of you as people who go to our church do. And, you know, beyond giving and all that, it's being engaged in the community, being engaged in different groups, activity.

So there's a mutual accountability that goes on. And I think the absence of that is a pretty good indicator of something.

Now, what's funny, what's sad, unfortunately, if you listen to the Mars Hill podcast, it's quite long, but it's super well done.

I had a church very similar, and I experienced a very small version of that. I could tell you everything that you see in the arc of it happened to us on a smaller scale.

Like what? Well, the pastor being less accountable, being unwilling to be criticized. I mean, just a whole number of things.

And I happened to be on the board, so I got to see the inside look. And it was a wrestled match.

And the hard part was to get all the other board members on board with seeing the same thing.

That was the real challenge, because I believe, you know, you don't want to move without consensus. You don't want to act without, you know, accountability.

And so it took a long time for everyone to agree to it. And the same thing happened in the Mars Hill situation until they finally left.

So anyway, yeah, yeah. So I think that's a good, I mean, it's a different podcast than this, but it's a very good series, and it's really well documented.

I can tell you, it was hard to listen to in some ways, but it was also, it was very good to listen to because it made me far more sensitive to sometimes the challenges that can occur in churches.

Wow. Okay. Well, getting back on track, let's talk about some people who faced political opposition.

I mean, right off the bat, Jesus, for sure. Yes, yes, absolutely. Daniel, obviously. Who else?

I mean, off the top of my head, my early Christian confused head, and I'm going to stay in that plane, in that lane, is

John the Baptist. I feel like, you know, anybody thrown in jail, any of the apostles, Abraham, I feel like many of the

Old Testament is him going into new governments and then having some sort of an exchange. What else would you say?

Well, I did want to, you know, talk, remind us about Daniel, because Daniel is the best example. Daniel and his three friends, particularly

Daniel chapter three, his three friends, you know, Nebuchadnezzar, you know, Daniel successfully tells

Nebuchadnezzar what the dream is about. Daniel's awarded, like, premiership, probably the third highest ruler in the land.

The next chapter, his friends that help pray with him for this, they're confronted now that Nebuchadnezzar is feeling great.

You know, this happens a lot in the Bible. This happens with biblical characters, not just biblical, but human characters, right?

You get all proud. You think, hey, I did something great. So then he builds a statue of, you know, that everyone has to worship.

And his three friends refuse to do that. And Nebuchadnezzar should have known better. Daniel didn't, didn't bow down to Marduk, the

God of Babylon. He, but yet his friends were forced to, they were compelled to. What I like about that story is that it's different than Daniel.

Daniel find, found ways to make appeals, to find ways of staying righteous separate, whereas they were confronted with what

I would call an act or a law that tried to compel them to behave in an ungodly way.

And they basically said, no, we cannot. And they were willing to die for that belief. So they were thrown in the burning fiery furnace.

Now that that's kind of key, right? That's pretty tough. Yeah, that is tough. I don't know if I would do that right now.

That would be really, really like, that's a hard thing to be obedient to. I mean, in the face of God, I know he can move mountains, but fiery furnace, it's pretty tough.

Well, I think about the Christians we've heard of that were beheaded in the Middle East with ISIS for being

Christians, having their heads lopped off. I mean, there's just, there's a lot of history, the early church, a lot of the martyrs.

What was interesting about the early martyrs, there was some really good history of them. Eusebius wrote books on it.

He said that the martyrs, the people that actually, you know, many refused to obey unjust and renounce

God. Those that did renounce God later came to regret the decision because they felt like they betrayed

God. And now they were ashamed. They had no community to go to. So they were actually worse off than those who died in many ways.

You're so right. You're right. If I did, you know, say I'm not going to the furnace, I don't believe in God.

Like you every day regret. Yes. Your life would be in shambles. So you think about betrayal, betrayal, you know, whether in a marriage or with your country or particularly with God, that has a heavy toll to it.

Now, a lot of people think that way. They're sociopathic about their thinking that I could do anything, betray people.

But at the heart of who we are as followers of Christ, that's not something that we will be given the grace we needed at the time to withstand it.

Now, it may not be fun. In fact, it will not be fun. But I think we'll be given the strength that we'll need at the right time.

So absolutely. So Daniel is a good example. His three friends are then, of course, in Daniel, chapter six, he's unjustly accused of not worshiping

Darius the Mede. But it was really a contrived challenge to him to try to get him.

And that was an attack on his faith. And he said nothing. And what I like about that is that he trusted in God so much he willingly went into the den of lions and came out alive.

And then he told the king, I have done nothing against God or against you, King Darius, live forever.

So that's another example. But there's one that we know about Christ. But I want to talk a little bit about one of my favorite verses when

I was growing up was because it was in a movie. It was a Gary Cooper movie. I can't remember the name of it offhand.

But anyway, is where it's it's it's the it's the passage in Matthew 22, where Jesus is confronted by some people, you know, render under Caesar, things are

Caesar. Let me read this passage, because I want to talk about it. In Matthew 22, 15 to 22.

Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him that is Jesus in his words.

And they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians saying, teacher, listen to this lie.

We know that you're you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion.

If you're not swayed by appearances, tell us then what do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin for the tax.

And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, whose likeness in inscription is this?

They said, Caesar's. And he said, therefore, render to Caesar, the things that are Caesar and to God, the things that are

God. When they heard this, they marveled. Now, this story is really fascinating on a couple of levels politically.

So the Pharisees, we've heard of them, they were they're very, they believe that they were the ones the keeper of the scribal laws, the traditions and all that.

They were very religious, and they struggled with who Jesus was. Now, all the different sects of Judaism, so the

Essenes, the zealots, the Pharisees, and I'm missing one.

They believed, because of Daniel chapter nine, that the Messiah would come about this time.

So the Pharisees knew he was going to come, but they had a very politicized view of who the Messiah would be.

He'd come in and conquer Rome. So they're trying to test Jesus. Now, who are these Herodians? What's interesting is the

Bible doesn't talk about the Herodians other than mentioning them in passing. What I looked at and what

I surmise is that if you remember when the Magi came to Herod the Great, the first Herodian king, they heard about the birth of Jesus from the star in the east.

They wanted to see where the new king was born. And Herod was like, okay, go find him and tell me where he is.

And then he sends people out to kill all the firstborn when he finds that they fled. I think that the

Herodians were sort of Herod's bodyguards that lasted through successive administrations. This is

Herod of Antipas now, so it's a descendant of Herod the Great, and the Herodians are those who zealously guard the king's prerogative to be the ruler, the king of Israel on behalf of Rome.

So in a way they represent Rome and the Pharisees don't like Rome, so they're joining together forces with people they don't like to kill

Jesus, to get him killed by Caesar's team. And so they expect, fully expect

Jesus to say, now why is this interesting? So when Julius Caesar dies, he was stabbed to death, his son

Octavian becomes Caesar Augustus and he divinizes or makes Julius Caesar a god.

And Augustus starts this tradition, this is before the birth of Christ, that I am the son of God and I have the gospel or the good news that I'm announcing a new reign, which parallels

Jesus coming and saying he has a gospel, a new kingdom. Isn't that fascinating? So all the groundwork was already laid for this very approach that was conflicted with the politics of Rome.

So Jesus, go ahead, you had a question there? So many questions. That's okay.

So the Pharisees were expecting exactly what happened kind of with the Caesars to happen with Jesus.

So that's why when Jesus was like, I'm from, I'm advancing the new kingdom, this is my kingdom,

I challenge Rome. No, that's not how we expected it to look. Exactly. So the

Pharisees, and they didn't even come, if you listen, the Pharisees went, they actually sent their disciples to with the

Herodians. They thought Herodians were so, they're like dogs in the

Pharisees view, right? They're scum. And so they couldn't even go themselves.

They had to send their disciples. They thought they had this trip, this trick out so well that Jesus would be caught.

And then everyone marvels. Now what's fascinating, there's a scholar of the New Testament named Tom Wright or N .T.

Wright, if you've never read his stuff, he's very interesting. He calls this the perfect storm. And the way he characterizes this is you have the gale force of Rome pushing on Israel, the national, the high pressure system of Israel's national aspirations, the

Pharisees and the divine wind of God's plan. God's plan is to inaugurate the kingdom, but it's the kingdom of that's here, but not yet.

That is this new kingdom that he's going to bring about by having everyone come through once his son dies.

Now, what's interesting in Paul, if you look in first Corinthians chapter six, Paul says, you know, had the rulers of this present age known what

Jesus was up to, what he was going to do, they would not have crucified him. It's a very fascinating statement.

So Jesus has to keep secret what he's doing. So his response is so brilliant.

He divides us in such a way that neither the Pharisees nor the Herodians can say anything to it.

Wow. Isn't that fascinating? That is really, this is why we have these conversations because that I had a question and then you took it way further, but I, okay.

So thank you for explaining that Dr. Clark. I do have a question though. You said, you know, give to Herod what is

Herod's and give to God what is Caesar's. Sorry. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is his.

If we bring it back to 2024, how do I do that?

How do I do that right now? You know, how do I distinguish what is God's and what is president Biden's, you know, how do we decide what needs to be obeyed in the

Bible versus obeyed in politics? And how, at what point can we not say, you know, well, my

Bible says this, so this is what I'm going to do. Even though president Biden says to do the opposite, how do we think through that as voters?

Well, and I would say it's beyond just being American. I think it's in any country, wherever you live, they all have taxes.

They all have, we all have a requirement to be obedient. And I might actually get into that passage if you don't mind, because I think it'd be useful.

I think, you know, Jesus is not trying to lay down a law. Okay. You have to give 50 % to Herod or Caesar and 50 % to God.

No, God wants everything of us. The taxes that are used, you know, however heavy, however onerous are a function of the state.

And so if it's money, give, you obey. If they want to, now, the reason why that's fascinating, because if you look at the, in the day in which

Jesus lived, there were tax collectors and they actually made a profit at that job. So they collected more taxes.

That was very onerous. So the taxes sound innocuous compared to, our taxes are innocuous compared to the taxes that they had.

They were more like roving bands of thieves that come around and bludgeon you into submission.

So, but I do want to, I want to cite this. So we talked about Jesus, talked about Daniel. Yes, there's other people that have faced opposition.

Paul did. But we don't have time for that. Let's go to a passage that I want to talk about here.

Romans 13, one through seven, and I'm going to make it a little shorter. Paul says, let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities.

For there is no authority except that which God has established. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.

He is God's servant. That is the ruler is God's servant. Now what's interesting, if you look at the

Greek, it's fascinating to me, the, when Paul says, let every person, it's beyond Christians.

He's saying everyone, not just Christians, everyone should be in subjection to authority. And Paul's pointing to something that's fundamentally true about all political societies, is that if there's a significant fraction of people that don't obey government authority, there's two things that can happen.

Both of which are bad. One, the country can descend into anarchy. Anarchy is the absence of higher authority.

And to put it in modern terms, it can descend into warlords, criminal gangs, really bad people ruling what we call failed states.

We see them in Africa. We see them in parts of the Middle East. The other flip side is a lot of people aren't obeying.

The government might try to take force by power or power by force and go into an authoritarian state, kind of like China or totalitarian state like China or Russia.

So Paul's pointing to something that's very fundamental. It's important that a significant fraction of people in a society obey so that the regime is quiet for the first purpose.

That is the restraint of evil. And the first purpose of government is to restrain the expression of evil from within people on people, but also from without with foreign adversaries that come in.

I agree with you, but you know, my first question is, well, what if I believe that the president's the antichrist?

I know like not to shock you, but I do think it's very hard to be like, well, God allowed.

I'm just going to keep being egocentric here. You know, God allowed president Biden to be in place. So I need to respect that he is a leader for God, but let's say

I'm super conservative. It's like, nope, he's the antichrist. That is Satan placed them on there. I have to represent my

Christianity in the wake of this evil. I feel that passion. I mean, I don't express it because I don't, but I know people that do, but yeah.

How do we navigate that? I mean, I see what the Bible's saying, but still I have these thoughts.

What would you recommend? Well, so this is why I like the book of Daniel again, and I'll keep recurring to that because Daniel doesn't say do if this, then that, if this, then do this.

What Daniel teaches us is to be wise, to be selective, to find alternatives, to be respectful of authority, but also to have a high view of God's sovereignty and where you find that you're being compelled to do something that may be unjust to disobey, but it has to be clearly unjust and you must be willing to pay the price for that disobedience.

Yeah, that is true. So, and then, but you know, let's remember Proverbs 21 .1 says, the

King's heart is in the hands of the Lord. He directs it like a water course, wherever he pleases.

That can be how we pray. Lord, would you direct our president to be more just and whichever president or whichever ruler, because you know, you may have people from other countries and you know, they would say

America, that's your problem, but look at ours. Our situation's worse. I mean, think about being a citizen in China, a believer in China, where you're not allowed to congregate in large groups, unless you're part of the official church, which denies

Christ. So yeah. So yeah. So there's a balance to that obedience.

I mean, it's not slavish. Like we saw with Daniel, it's not being enslaved to the culture, to the political politics, to the ideology.

It's being respectfully separate from it and being righteous and being obedient with a high cost.

I mean, think of Daniel, what high cost did he pay? Taken from his home, his name was changed, likely castrated, denied the ability to pray, to be at the temple of worship, which was later destroyed.

So that was a much higher cost than simply what happened during COVID, what happened with the coronavirus.

You know what I mean? It can be a lot worse and it is a lot worse in places around the world to this day.

Okay. I just thought of a little game called Christian or un -Christian. And I'm going to give you a scenario and you tell me which, if it's

Christian or not Christian. Okay. Posting on Facebook about how wrong the other political side is,

Christian or un -Christian. How did you do it? How was it done? Let's put it that way.

It's a public post on my Facebook page about how much I don't like Biden or how much

I don't like Trump and how wrong he is. So let me ask you a question. Has anyone ever won anyone over based on a social media post?

It depends who you ask, but I would say no. Okay. I don't know anyone that's won over to position by that.

And I'll talk about that for a second, if that's okay, social media. If you and I are just having a political conversation, a discussion, my approach would be, and you have a difference.

We have a difference on either abortion or gun rights or whatever. I would just ask you questions.

I would want to find out more. Why do you hold the views that you do? What's your moral foundation? What's the basis for which you hold this particular view?

Have you thought it through? Now, I'm not here to correct you. I'm here to learn because before you can actually engage someone, there's a sociologist in Stanford that did a research study.

He found that the best way to convince someone of a different way of thinking politically is to not shout, to not argue, not to say you're wrong.

It's to appeal to their moral principles. So let's say you're conservative and you believe in the value of justice.

I would try to seek to have you understand, okay, where is the justice? Let me give you an example. I have a young, a former student, black guy, six, six basketball, was basketball.

He still plays basketball as a senior, but he's up there. I once asked him, I said, Hakeem, he converted from Islam to Christianity years ago.

Great guy. Love him dearly. I just asked him offhand, how many times have you been pulled over?

He thought about it for a second. He goes about a hundred. Now, if, you know, people then get upset with Black Lives Matter, but if you ask that question and you find that, well, it's not just to be pulled over simply because driving while black, right?

So I can learn. I can learn from you. I can learn from both of us and we can talk about that. The other thing about social media is there's none of what we're doing here.

There's no, I'm looking at your, you're listening to my voice, my actions, my hand gestures.

You get none of that on social media, right? We get a post, but 80 % of emotional content that is communicated is communicated non -verbally.

So it's the raise of the eyebrow. It's the smile that I have. It's the, you know, joking with you.

On social media, that's completely gone. 80 % of our human communication is gone.

So it tends to be those who think they do well at social media are the ones that shout the loudest.

And that really is only about 2 % of users. And again, I don't know how many people are persuaded by shouting down.

And let me give you, can I give you a psychological reason why that is? Of course. Okay. So this is based on some research my wife does.

She's a marriage family therapist and she is especially a trauma therapist. She has done research with, from a fellow at UCLA, a guy named

Dan Siegel, Daniel Siegel. He's a research psychiatrist and he's done a lot of good work. One is, one book, it's called

Brainstorm. It's what happens to kids between the ages of say 15 and 25.

Their neurons are sloughing off, they're adding new ones, they're learning things, they're changing is going on rapidly.

But because of that change, they feel justice, issues of justice more strongly. They feel more emotional about things and they do something that's called flipping their lid.

Let me give you his hand brain model. Let's see if you can see this. So imagine this is my spinal cord.

This is my brainstem. This is my limbic system. Now, if it was accurate, it'd have two sides, but there's amygdala and other things.

And this is my cortex. And it comes over this whole system. And my prefrontal cortex are these two fingers.

The prefrontal cortex is the only part that touches both the amygdala and the brain stem. Just for everyone listening, you have to go to the

YouTube to see what Dr. Clark is doing with his hands. It's not monkey business, that's for sure.

But what he talks about is when you have that effect, like someone yells at you, and I'm going to give you an example.

No information content other than this. No. No. How does that make you feel?

You breathed in, didn't you? Scared. That's because your brainstem is reacting and your brain flips its lid.

Your prefrontal cortex, the executive function of your body goes offline. So what we see on social media is a bunch of people flipping their lids at each other.

And it doesn't communicate. That's why it cannot persuade people. There's a term that they use that I love.

It's in a book called You're Not Listening. It's called the feeling of being chased by a bear.

When your amygdala goes off, it thinks milliseconds faster than your prefrontal cortex.

So you react, your body reacts, you recoil, and you revolt against what's happening.

It's either fight, flight, or freeze. And this is what happens on social media. That's why I don't believe social media is the venue through which you engage.

You can't engage in nuanced conversation, right? You can't ask questions. How do you believe this? Why do you think that?

Have you thought about this? You can't engage. And there's all this separation out of all the human component that makes it so intimate and personal.

It takes the humanness out of our conversation. Okay. So very long answer to it.

But would you say that it's unchristianly? It's just unwise, I would say. I think it's unwise. Yeah. It's unhelpful.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Second one, and then we can move forward, is going to protests.

How do you feel about that? Do you think that is christianly to stand up for what you believe in? Or do you think that is, again, flipping your lid and just yelling and not communicating?

So it depends on what you mean by protests. So let me give it a couple examples. I've been asked to be a co -signer to amicus curiae.

Amicus curiae are friends of the court briefing. So you've never heard of that. It's a legal term.

Amicus curiae, anytime there's a lawsuit or legislation, there's someone that wants to challenge it or encourage maybe changing the legislation to be better.

What they look for people, law firms that are recruited to do this, look for people of political or economic or whatever kind of influence.

And then they ask them for, would you be willing to sign this appeal? And so I've participated in that.

That is a protest, but it's not shouting and knocking pans together.

I am also president of the board for scholars for peace in the Middle East and president of the association for the study of the

Middle East and Africa. Both of those organizations are hated by a lot of people on the extreme left, the progressive left, that think

Israel's responsible for everything wrong in the world. And I believe as a Christian, it's important that we stand up for our

Jewish brothers and sisters because they've been persecuted and the church didn't protect them very well during Nazi German times.

So is it a protest? Sort of. It's my political activism. Have I ever sat out and protested or sat outside of an abortion clinic?

No. But saying that doesn't you can't do that. How do you do it wisely?

Is it better to go and pray? Is it better to offer alternatives? And let me give you another example, if I may.

Recently when the Dobbs decision came down and reversed Roe v. Wade, there was a whole lot of non -Christians that were writing, you

Christians don't care about children. You only care about the unborn. And so I was asked, would you do some research?

Is that true? And what I found, and I did a blog piece on it. What I found, it was fascinating. Only 2 % of Americans adopt.

Of those, that 2 % accounts for almost 50 % of worldwide adoptions.

But what's interesting - Oh my gosh. I know. Americans are adopting 2 % of global adoptions.

2 % of Americans adopt 50 % of adoptions worldwide. It's stunning.

But the numbers get more interesting the more you drill down. Christians are on average twice as likely as non -Christians to adopt.

But when you drill down even further, Catholics are three times as likely and conservative evangelicals are five times as likely to adopt.

So what's interesting is that statement, Christians don't care about the born, they only care about the unborn. That's simply not true.

The evidence suggests that Christians put their money where their mouth is. Because you think about all the resources that goes into raising another child, to adopting people, to all the paperwork, all the hassle.

Christians actually put their... So it's not a protest, but it is showing an alternative. It's an alternative to the way in which things are done.

I see. And it's a pretty good apologetic. Good reason for why we believe what we believe, if that makes sense.

Interesting. Yeah. I guess protesting is possible in a more subtle, organized way. Okay. Let's get back to our regularly scheduled notes.

Sorry for that. No, no, no. This is great. It's okay. Okay. So where were we?

I think we were talking about how we know when to obey the Bible versus how we know when to obey the authority in place.

So just moving on, how does the Bible show us how to engage in political oppression?

That's my question. In political oppression or opposition? Sorry, opposition. I read the word too quickly.

That's okay. Well, there's two different things, right? And both are interesting. So I think

Jesus gave us the golden rule, do unto the others as you'd be done by. A friend of mine at Reasons to Believe, Ken Samples, says the golden rule of apologetics is treat others the way you'd like to be treated.

I believe the golden rule of politics is the same thing. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated. That's why

I think it's not only unwise, it's counterproductive to shout people down, to tell them they're wrong, they're evil, is to maybe begin by asking questions.

Again, I have friends. I purposely stay in touch with non -Christians who think differently than I do, and we engage in rational conversation.

He knows I'm a Christian. He knows I'll pray for him. He knows that when trouble comes, I pray for him.

He's helped me. And when COVID was going around, he went shopping because I'm vulnerable because of reactive airway disease.

So I think there's ways that you... Now, it depends on the extent of political opposition, right?

Again, I go back to the early example in my career, you know, this associate dean telling me

I couldn't do what I was doing because I was mistaking Cal State with faith.

And at the end of it, once I realized that Christ said I was being blessed by this opposition,

I was being identified with Christ, I was able to calm down and then point out that, hey, there's a lot of people that go out and use their university reference, not to say university's position is

X, like on abortion or whatever, but to say they are from the university. Do I not have the same right?

And he eventually left it at that. I'm sorry, you lost me a bit. What do you mean by that? So I wasn't saying this is what

Cal State University San Bernardino believes. I was saying I'm a professor at Cal State San Bernardino, but I believe this.

So I separated the two and was able to deflect that hostility, that opposition. And this is where I think the wisdom of Daniel is good.

If it's a clear case of being compelled to do something unjust that violates

God's law, God's moral requirement, then we have to demur. We have to decline to participate.

We have to oppose and be willing to pay the price for that disobedience. But in almost all the other cases, it requires wisdom and thinking through and praying.

If you look at Daniel, he went to pray with his three friends and they prayed about the approach they would take on things.

And I think that's another reason why we need to be in communities. We need to be praying for one another and to help share that burden because it's not easy to know exactly what to do.

There's no pat answers to these tough political questions. It takes wisdom.

And wisdom is skill, is learning how to navigate the complexities, the nuances of politics.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like that just answers kind of a couple questions is which one should I do? Should I protest or should

I pray? And it seems like it always comes down to praying first, and that will guide you. And I doubt the prayer is going to be like, oh, set a building on fire or shout in the streets or exile certain groups of people.

It seems like the prayer is always going to lead to a wise decision that is typically nonviolent and way more productive.

I would agree. I think you can't go wrong by having prayer, right? I know of no circumstance in which prayer proceeding action is a bad thing.

If anything, lack of prayer proceeding action means I'm usually going to mess it up.

Unless by God's grace, I get out of some reason. I completely agree.

So, you know, if it's okay, maybe we can talk about the commands to pray. And because this specifically addresses one of the questions you and I talked about before, which is how do we pray for people who are in political authority we don't agree with?

Yes. Okay. So 1 Timothy 2, 1 through 3 gives us this command. Paul, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life.

It's interesting. There's a purpose. He wants the prayer to be oriented such that political leadership can leave us to be and to survive and to thrive in a

Christian community. So if the first purpose of government was with that obedience one to constrain or restrain the expression of evil in society and from without the second kind of tell us or end of government should allow us to lead quiet and peaceful lives that we can grow in all godliness.

So you notice it says it's prayers and treaties, petitions, thanksgiving it's that's where it gets hard, right?

How is it, you know, especially when you don't like Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan or whoever, or Mohammed bin

Salman in Saudi Arabia or Xi Jinping in China or Vladimir Putin in Russia, there's, you know, if you think about all the believers around the world, they have got a lot of different situations that are far worse than ours.

So, and that, that command is for all of them and all of us. So I think, again, what we should be praying for is for a political leadership.

And that is not just the president, but it's cabinet, the whole executive branch, which is almost 4 million people, the legislative branch or judiciary, all levels, state, local, federal, there's a lot to pray for.

If we're kept in so much prayer, it's going to be take us a long time to get to complaining on social media about things. Sorry, I just had to throw that in there for you.

Of course, of course, you can't be tweeting when you're praying. Kind of tough. But I also want to add, you know,

I can give some ideas for what we can pray about. I mean, I think pray for what you think is right, pray for what you think is just, pray for, you know, the good things that you and I or others may think about, right?

To, you know, less taxes or more taxes used for good things or whatever it is, whatever you want to pray for.

But beyond that, I'm going to give us a list of things that we can think about. But before I do, one thing

I want to share with you is this, the problem of what's called the power paradox. And the reason why

I want to share it is because I think, you know, we see it with King David. When King David got too powerful, he saw

Bathsheba from his rupture had her husband killed in battle and took her for his wife.

And Nathan, the prophet, kind of came up to him and said, hey, if you watched a man stealing a farmer's ewe lamb, what would you do?

I'd get furious. Well, this is what you have done. Nathan was wise counsel to David, but he gave him a way to recognize his own sin.

What happens is in the power paradox, and I want to, research is done by a research psychologist, a social psychologist at UC Berkeley.

His name is Docker Keltner. I have the book right here. I'll have to share it with you. It's called The Power Paradox.

I don't know if you can see that. It's a really good book because how we gain and lose influence.

He talks about this. I'm going to simplify his model because it's sort of complex, but basically he argues that people gain power in churches and organizations and tribes and governments through four key virtues.

They are seen to have these virtues, but there seems to be in the DNA, once you get power, these four virtues convert to vices.

And let me tell you what those are. Empathy. Empathy is that sense of feeling and sensing what others feel and what they mean by what they say, right?

And that's important. If you see a and they're able to empathize with half the country or majority of the country, they can then are going to be granted more power.

They also giving and giving is this, you know, in human conduct, it's by shaking hands, pat on the back, it's expressing touch and giving for what value you are to me and what value others are to us, or I am to others.

The third virtue is gratitude, feeling generous towards people who help you for good reason, right?

And then finally, they engage, they tend to engage in narratives, that is stories that unite people around common goals, common objectives.

If you look at really good businesses, they all have good narratives about what makes them useful, what makes them unique, what makes them good, right?

Probably the best political leader we ever had on narratives that unite was Abraham Lincoln, even though he presided over a civil war, but he was someone that traveled around the country, picked up stories, could tell anecdotes, could be, could read from Shakespeare, can quote the

King James, he did it better than anyone else. But Docker Keltner points out these four virtues, it's really hard to hang on to them once you get power, unless you either have a really good, you're focused on others the whole time, which is interesting, because it's almost impossible.

Because typically, that sense of empathy goes to empathy deficits, inability to sense what others feel.

And it's amazing how quickly this can happen to people. Like within a year or within a day?

Like, what do you mean? Within minutes. Oh, my gosh. It's scary. So think about, you know, let them make cake, you know,

Marie Antoinette's famous expression, right? Think about, I mean, there's other ones we'll talk about, having no sense that half a quarter of the electorate is rural white people, and treating them as basket of deplorables.

You know what I mean? That's an empathy deficit. Instead of giving, they're self serving.

They serve themselves rather than others. This is the whole Me Too movement. If you think about why that happened, it's because men were in positions of power, and they were self serving.

They were taken from women. It's large, you know, large challenges in our society are a function of this power paradox.

Feeling generous or gratitude goes towards incivility and disrespect. The basket of deplorables is again, the other one.

And then instead of narratives that unite, there are, you go to narratives that are exceptional, why we are exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else.

And we see that a lot of political leadership, right? You know, this is flyover country, you know, between East Coast to West Coast.

It's all flyover country. But we're, we're the elite, we can, we know better, we know what's going on.

So and, and good scholarship points out the longer people have power, the more entrenched it becomes, it stays in there.

The only, the only other study that I found that showed how you can avoid this is Dr. Keltner recommends,

Dr. Keltner, the psychologist recommends that you stay focused on others. And it's almost biblical, his, his idea, but I won't get into it.

It's almost biblical, it's staying humble, it's staying, you know, it's staying above the fray, still being other serving, right?

Other centered, which is a Christian ethic, a Christian worldview. The problem is,

I think, without Christ, it's almost impossible for people to do it. So the only other thing that happens that can happen to help people stay in check, is to have someone like a

Nathan the prophet, you know, someone that will call your stuff will call you on your BS. And the study of 100 presidents and prime ministers, done by a number of research psychologists found that only like five or six had very close confidence, they could actually say no, that's wrong.

And the political leader would listen to them and change course, like David did with Nathan, Nathan, the prophet, it's a very hard thing to swallow when you get power.

Let's go back to that church illustration, Mars Hill, one of the first indicators was that something was wrong was the elders that were trying to call them an account kept getting kicked off the board.

The ones that try to call and then he was told, I'll just thinking about people in our life that are like, really fallen into this,

I can name a couple right now. I can name a whole class of political leaders that are that way. And I'm not going to name names, but almost the whole political, the elites in our country are, are basically succumbed to the power of paradox.

But let me give you a fun illustration. He was, it's not even just the real power, it's even the appearance or the symbol of power.

And he did this study in the streets of Berkeley, he has grad assistants, go out and monitor and they gave cars to a bunch of people to drive around through the city.

And they gave them old beaters like old Dotsons, all the way up to including Mercedes, people that drove

Mercedes Benz were five times more likely to cut other people off. Even within sec, yeah, just with having a

Mercedes Benz, a symbol of power gave them permission to violate the rules. And we see it, it's the wealthy that tend to do far more things that violate because they have a sense of privilege, a sense of entitlement, far more likely to steal, to rob in stores.

I mean, not rob, but pickpocket, not pickpocket. Yeah, it does make you think I've been having this thought a lot recently of like, why do pastors and preachers get so caught up in these sinful situations of cheating and, and pedophilia and all of these horrible things.

And I guess my thought before this was, well, they're very close to God, they're very under spiritual attack.

But this element of power is really coming into play of entitlement and getting away with it, even though they're in a holy job.

They still have that entitlement of like, it'll be fine. Yeah, they can't get caught until they do.

Yeah, or I deserve this because look at all the good I'm doing. Right. And that's so that's that power paradox.

It affects it. So it's almost like a original sin inherit and having power, which is why you have to be willing and able to have people hold you accountable and be willing to let them hold you accountable.

When I just give a personal anecdote, I know we're getting close up against our time here. But I give a personal anecdote when

I was about 50 something, I got a large grant, like almost $4 million grant to run seven universities as a consortium for the intelligence community.

And I had a lot of resources, I made sure to put in place three or four people that could hold me accountable on every decision

I made. And I would go to them before I'd make a decision on changing something or making sure

I got paid or whatever. It's like, I'm going to have other people verify that this not self serving and all that.

You need that. I think it's fair to say you need that help. And that's why we're a community, right?

And it just helps. And what were the attributes you looked for in those people? Somebody that could be honest with you, somebody that you trusted, what was it?

Speak their mind and be honest. And in particular, one guy, the chair of our department, he's

Catholic, but he and I kind of did that for each other for years. Whenever he'd run into problems as chair,

I taught him how to be chair after I stepped down, then I got this grant. When he'd get really mad at someone or some issue, he would come to me first and vent to me before he would do anything.

And then I'd say, wait 24 hours or wait for the weekend before you do something and vice versa. So we had to speak each other's mind and we had to do it in a way that was as equals.

It couldn't be a subordinate. It had to be an equal or someone that I saw as equal and be willing to listen to.

Subordinates will modify the powerless. And this is what Keltner talks about. The powerless will modify their behavior around the powerful.

And so you need to have equals that can hold you accountable. Yeah. And you have to listen to the person that you're trusting.

You can't just be like, oh, well, I have this token person. They're actually giving you advice and wait 24 hours or wait out the weekend.

Really interesting. One of the last notes is we talk about order and this is something we haven't gone into a bit, but looking at the order that God puts in place and how that structures that.

And I think you've already touched on that, is being a Christian, we're already set by these ideals, but what can you speak to when it comes to order?

So I think it's interesting. We've talked about obedience. We've talked about prayer. We've talked about political engagement, social media.

Let's put it in an overarching worldview if we can for a second. We tend to, the

Old Testament had a Deuteronomy 32 .8 worldview and Paul did as well.

And all the people that wrote different books of the Bible. What do I mean by that? It says in Deuteronomy 32 .8,

when the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up the boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.

For the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob has allotted inheritance. Now it doesn't sound like much, but if you think of it, it goes back, it harkens back to the

Tower of Babel. You know, God is so frustrated. He's had to destroy humankind once. He's had to now divide a man because they unite against him and against righteous followers.

So he says, all right, disperse. You're going to be going around the world and I'm going to turn you over to the rule of these corruptible angels that going to have geographic domain names.

These are the celestial beings that are declared corrupt in Psalm 82. They're going to be judged like and die like men.

Paul, you know, Daniel sees them, right? When he's in Daniel chapter 10 through 12, there's a person that comes to him and answer to his long prayer.

What's going on with this and the stuff that he sees, the visions that he has. And he's a man dressed like in linen who comes to him.

And what's interesting is he's being resisted for 21 days by the Prince of Persia.

The Prince of Persia is understood to be one of these celestial beings that manages and controls Persia. And he was resisted until the great

Archangel Michael came and helped him. And then he delivered Daniel the message and helped him understand.

And he went back and then the Prince of Greece was coming, which suggests to us that that whole domain principalities and power things is still going on to this day.

There's a Prince of China. There's a Prince of the US. There's a Prince of Europe. There's princes and lesser beings.

Paul talks about it this way. Principalities, powers, rulers, Lords, Lords of the air. These are the warfare that we wage against is this cosmic worldview and cosmic spiritual geography, if you will, within which humans actually manage the affairs of state.

So what we should be praying about is for God's wisdom and directing all of that political leaders within this versus God's angel, angelic beings on constraining sometimes the expression of evil, like what we see with Russia, China, or even the

US. I would argue that much of what we see today in international politics is not strictly humans fighting or civil wars.

It's also got a very strong spiritual dimension. And what's interesting, our mission, if we want to tie it back in, if Daniel had his mission,

Isaiah 49 .6, you know, I want you to be a light to the Gentiles. Our mission is to go out and give the gospel to the entire world.

Here's why. It ties back into this Deuteronomy 32 .8. Matthew 24 .14 says this, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached into the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Acts 17 says this, and it harkens back to Deuteronomy 32. 16 .26 .38, from one man, he made every nation a man that they should inhabit the whole earth.

And he determined the time set for them in the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for and find him, even though he is not far from each of us.

For in him, we live and move and have our being. So part of that great reversal that began at the cross with the announcement of the kingdom of God is what our mission is today.

And so that's our primary mission. Our kingdom focus is to continue that great reversal that started at the

Babel and needs to continue to be reversed until God brings about the end times. Wow.

Yeah. Easy, easy light work. Got it. Done and done.

One and done. Very well said. This is a lot to digest. I'm so glad we do this.

I feel like we touched on so many topics. This was way better than I envisioned, to be honest.

So thank you so much for bringing all this insight into it. Before I forget, what do you have to plug?

I have to give you that spotlight there, Dr. Clark. Thank you. Yeah, I I'm finishing my book on the book of Daniel on He Lived Politically and I'm looking for a publisher as we speak.

I also have a sub stack. It's marktclark .substack .com.

I've host this podcast, the previous one. I'll host this one there. A podcast

I did on Hamas's early take on Hamas's invasion of Israel, but also blog pieces and I'll continue doing more.

And that subscription is for free. So thank you for allowing me to plug that. It's ad free content.

I appreciate it. You've got some amazing articles on there and the political take is so culturally relevant right now.

So yeah, definitely go check it out. Yeah, this podcast will be on there, but this podcast is everywhere. So thank you for coming on.

I'm going to email you immediately after this for the UFO. Thank you so much for coming on and we'll chat soon.