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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Beast Network. Right, let's get started today. I hope you had a good weekend, a good Lord's Day, a good everything.
I just got back from Texas the other day on Saturday, and yeah, Texas was great, man. It rained the entire time, which I didn't even know it rained in Texas, so there you go. That's good. But if you saw on Twitter, I was there with Joel Webben and Andrew Isker.
We were recording a nine-part series on The Boniface Option, which is Andrew Isker's new book. And it was a great time. I mean, these guys are just such solid guys. They're people that you can talk to, that you can have fun with, and all of that kind of thing.
And they're just both very good at assessing our current situation that we find ourselves in in the United States in 2023. And it doesn't stop there. They're very good at talking through the solutions for people in the church.
The series will be chock-full of things that everyday people can focus on and do and work to accomplish in order to really turn the tide here. And I think that that's the key. Everyone can talk about the problems that we face, but very few people even dare to address the kinds of strategies that are needed in order to move forward, at least in any detail.
And that's what this series is all about. So I hope you like it. They're going to do some editing work, and it's going to be like a produced series, so it's not going to come out for a couple of months, I think.
But if the conversations themselves were any indication, you're going to find this very helpful, in my opinion. Andrew Risker, by the way, he is just like a walking encyclopedia. I mean, honestly, he's a very smart guy.
He knows a lot about history. And I personally really appreciate his delivery style as well. Just all-around good stuff. And so for today's video, I wanted to talk about cultural Christianity, because we talked a lot about that this weekend and last week with the two guys.
And also I listened recently to a podcast, the Backwoods Belief podcast. If you don't listen to that podcast, I highly recommend it. It's very, very good. Yeah, I guess that's all I can really say about it.
Backwoods Belief, they just did an episode on cultural Christianity and really praising cultural Christianity. And I wanted to talk about that as well, because there's this idea in Big Eva and also mid-Eva as well that cultural Christianity is like the worst possible thing.
And it's really kind of ubiquitous. In fact, on the Backwoods Belief podcast, they mentioned a Ray Ortlund tweet where he was talking about how he can't wait for cultural Christianity to be over, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I remember that one. And lots of people in my life have bemoaned cultural Christianity and how the Bible Belt is like the worst place or whatever and all this kind of stuff. And I've hated that perspective for a very long time.
In fact, when I was a pastor, my co-elder used to do this all the time from the pulpit. And I remember having conversations with him on the side like, dude, you got to stop. You got to stop that. He made it seem like there's just barely any believers out there.
In Texas, there's barely any believers in Texas. And that's just not the case. In fact, a lot of people that get not slandered, but just pilloried or just people, a lot of the scorn that's heaped on cultural Christianity is heaped upon people that have a faith in the Lord, have a simple faith in the Lord.
Maybe they're not as far as long theologically as you'd like them to be, but they have and they're saved. These people are saved, a lot of them. But even the ones that aren't, even the culture at large, the cultural Christianity that's kind of hypocritical Christianity.
That's another way that people like to talk about it. Even that is a good thing and a blessing from the Lord. And one of the stories I told, and actually Ben and Jeff on their podcast kind of talked about this a little bit as well, is God works through cultural Christianity to save souls.
And so if you're concerned with evangelism, you should prefer cultural Christianity to cultural secularism or paganism or Islam or whatever it is. You should prefer cultural Christianity because it is a boon to evangelism.
It is a boon to people getting saved. And I even told my story. My story is part of this. So I grew up in the church, right? I went to church and I got baptized when I was like, I don't know, 10 or 11 or something like that.
And I went to VBS and all these things. And I lived in an orbit of a lot of cultural Christianity, let's say. But I was a total hypocrite. You know, I wasn't saved. You know, I did not have a faith that was my own.
I went through the motions and I knew the right answers to get people to kind of leave me alone kind of thing. But I was not trusting in the Lord. You know what I mean? I wasn't doing the things that the Lord would want me to do.
In fact, I rarely gave it a second thought. But I did have sort of a sense. And this came from the culture I was raised in. I did have a sense when I would be at the bar and I'd be like 15 drinks in or I'd be high on cocaine or whatever and doing whatever degeneracy I was up to at that particular time.
I did have a sense that I ought not be doing what I was doing. You know what I mean? And I remember very distinctly times when I was high out of my mind and I'd look at myself in the mirror. And I'd have those moments where you look at yourself and you're like, what am I doing?
You know what I mean? And maybe some of you have had that experience as well. And I'm not making any determinations about my audience. But maybe some of you can relate to that where you just kind of almost see outside of yourself for just a moment.
And you're like, what is my life? Like what am I doing with my life? I had many of those kinds of moments. I always had a sense that what I was doing was not right. Now, of course, the Holy Spirit of God, you know, could have been, you know, and probably was, you know, you know, working within me at that time.
Right. And there's, of course, that's that's that's that's crucial. That's that's necessary and all of that kind of thing. But you got to understand that God works through means as well. Right. And so the means of that in many instances.
And I think I'm no exception was that I was raised a certain way and I was taught a certain way. And I was I was taught about the Lord. And I was people told me about the gospel and I heard correct teaching on righteousness and things like that.
And so, you know, I knew that there was something wrong with me. And here's the thing, guys, like sometimes we get in arguments with like atheists and stuff. And atheists will say something stupid like, well, you're only a Christian because you live in America.
If you were in Saudi Arabia, you know, you'd be a Muslim. And we like to fight against that because we're thinking of like the fact that the Holy Spirit of God can can save anybody. Like like God can choose people from any culture, any nation, any religious background and save them.
And of course, that's very true. But there is something to that argument from an atheist that that's actually correct. Like if I was in the same boat, right, and I was in another country and and where they worshipped a different God, a different demon, you know what I mean?
And all of that kind of thing, like I could have had those same moments of clarity where I'm like, I know I'm not supposed to be doing this. And instead of running to the church, because I knew as when I was an adult and I finally came to the end of myself, I knew that the place to run was the church.
It could have been that I would I was born in Yemen or something like that. And I would think to myself, what I need to do is go to the mosque. Right. That that's that's that's definitely how it works in a place like Yemen, typically.
And again, we don't say that the Holy Spirit can't, you know, step in there. But but but but the atheist actually does have a point because God actually does work through means. And God chose to put me in my particular family, in my particular town, my particular nation.
He chose to put me, Adam Robles, in those contexts where that when I came to the end of myself and I had had enough of what I was doing and I had the sense the entire time that I was not doing right. Who was I offending?
He put me in a particular place to come to a particular conclusion that I was offending the Lord. And the place to run, to figure that out and to and to and to and to get my sin dealt with was the church of Jesus Christ.
Like that is important and it is not good if our culture degenerates to such a degree that a young man who comes to the end of himself thinks, OK, here's what I'll do. I'll go sacrifice something to Odin or I'll go, you know, get some therapy.
That's what I'll do. That's how I'll solve my sin problem. I'll go to a therapist. That is not a good thing. And so these guys like Ray Ortlund and Jared Wilson used to say this kind of stuff all the time.
And so many people that want to be just like them, they want to be, oh, I'm not like one of those Bible Belt hypocritical Christians that voted for Trump. Those people are wishing and hoping and praying.
I think even the Ray Ortlund tweet, if I'm not mistaken, he was praying for the end of that. Where somebody is just is just he grows up, you know, just kind of in this this this space where every everybody is a Christian, so to say.
And everybody knows that when you're in trouble, you can run to the church and you can get your sin dealt with like that's what you do. You're offending Jesus Christ, not Odin, not not, you know, whatever demon Mohammed worshipped, you know, that kind of thing like like that's a that's a good thing.
And to pray for the end of that, my friends, is evil. It's evil. I just like like like this whole idea of cultural Christianity. Look, obviously, it's not the best thing. You know, it would be better if everyone was a full believer.
Right. But cultural Christianity is actually a good thing. It's a very good thing. And so we should not be praying for the end of that. We should not be. And furthermore, this is the thing like this episode is going to be called the sadism and the masochism of anti-Christian nationalism.
And again, I'm not talking about people that don't take the label, but they kind of agree with the thrust that, you know, the nation needs to repent. And, you know, we need to have laws in line with God's morality and stuff like that.
You guys, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the anti that. It's sadistic what they want to happen to people, your neighbors in our country, it's sadistic. And it's also masochistic because people have this idea, too, like like, oh, the church has always gotten stronger.
It's better for the church to not have cultural Christianity. It's better for the church to be under persecution. And then they go and they work to those ends. No, it's not better for the work of the church to be under persecution.
God works even under persecution. So I'm not saying that God's not working. And I'm not saying that God doesn't build his church even through persecution, but it's not better. And a lot of people have done the historical work to show that that that whole idea that, you know, it's only when there are people are martyred that people become Christian.
That's just not true. It's not true. It's a it's a good line for people that want to drive us into losses and to losing. But it's not actually correct. It's not. It's sadistic and it's masochistic. It's not the case that it would be better for young men like myself in living in New York City, looking at themselves in the mirror, you know, just come to the point of tears, wondering what their life has become.
It is not good that the milieu that they grew up in and the water that they swim in would say, no, no, no. Here's what you need to do. You need to go find a therapist. In fact, there's an online therapist.
You can just talk to you, talk to your problems and all that kind of stuff. That's not beneficial to your neighbor. And praying for the end of a nation that that would that would in many ways like it's OK, sure, maybe they're just tipping the hat to the Lord.
But but praying for the end of people even doing that and just having having full paganism, full secularism, that's not a righteous prayer. It isn't. It isn't because that environment is not better for conversions.
It's sadistic and it's masochistic. This is a this is a this is a tweet from Scott O 'Neill. And, you know, he he had a couple of really just just really brain dead tweets last week. And, you know, we talked about one of them.
This is another one where him and his his buddies, they're taking this tour of all the, you know, the tombs of of of old church fathers and like the buildings of that that Christians made and and places that were important to Christianity.
And, you know, they're they're they're taking these smiling selfies and pictures of themselves at these places. And, you know, like it's a vacation for them, you know, they're touring, you know, really what they're touring is the glories of Christendom of the past.
And so what do you do when you're on vacation and you go to a site that you want to remember that you were at and what you were like when you were at that site? I do this myself. You take pictures of yourselves, right?
You know, I took I take picture. I was at the I was at the Ark Encounter. So I took a picture of my family at the Ark Encounter. I want to remember that moment, you know, as you take pictures of yourself at these at these sites of things that you want to remember.
And, you know, people were all over this. It's like, yeah, praise God. You know, Christendom, you know, let's let's let's rebuild. Let's do it better. Let's get let's get let's let's let's get after it.
You know, we got a lot of work to do because, you know, if you look at you took pictures of like a lot of modern cities, it doesn't look this way. It doesn't it doesn't have this same kind of this kind of thing.
It's not as good. Right. And so great. You know, you're you're praising Christendom. You know, it's Scott here says funny. If anything, these sites remind us of the dangers of state religion, the dangers of state religion, these glorious sites that I was happy to take a picture at just to show I was taking those pictures, the smiling selfies to remind myself how actually terrible Christendom is.
That's what Aaron Villan says here. And it's just it's preposterous. It's absolutely preposterous. If I don't believe, Scott, that that's why he was taking these pictures. Right. To remind himself about dangerous state churches.
And when everyone's a Christian, how dangerous it is, everyone's cultural Christianity. That's not why he was taking these pictures. That's what he's presenting here. He wants a memento of the dangers of state religion.
That is sadistic, if it's true. You know what? I believe him. That's why he's taking these pictures. He's taking these pictures in the sense of never again, never again will we do this. And it's like.
That's sadistic and it's masochistic. It was better for people to grow up in a place where people honor the Lord in their buildings, in their architecture, even if they were doing it hypocritically. They knew that there was something good about honoring the Lord to try to take that away from some of these people.
And for the future generations. It's it's it's really it's messed up. It's messed up. Cultural Christianity is good. Christendom was good. It was good for everybody. In fact, we're living right now in as much comfort and as much positive morality as we have.
We don't have as much as we used to, but we have what we have now because of all the capital that we gained during Christendom. Many lives were saved. Many souls were saved due to Christendom. Many. And to take these pictures and to look, I'm going to believe him.
He's taking these pictures with a hashtag never again. And to do that, it's sadistic. It really is. It really is. And I got to be honest, it kind of boggles the mind that how sadistic it is. And look, and some of this is driven by eschatology, I know, because a lot of people will say, look, when it gets worse and worse, that's when you know that Jesus is almost coming.
I don't know if Scott says that, but a lot of people do say that where it's like it's almost like, oh, you know, you know, we know we're nowhere close to the end when we go to heaven with the Lord, when the church is being persecuted and everything is terrible and morality is spurned by everybody.
And that's how you know that we're almost there. Right. And if that's your eschatology, then I don't really have a problem with you. But what what really does end up happening a lot of the time is that then you go and you work to make it happen.
So it's not just that you're masochistic, that, you know, when you're being beaten down, you're like you're like happy about it and the church is being beaten down like you're happy about it because Christ is coming.
That's kind of masochistic. But it doesn't end there. Typically for a lot of people, they end up working against the church and setting themselves up for more persecution and for things to be worse for their children and for themselves and for their generations after that.
You end up working against the very things that you should be for. It's sadistic. It's sadistic. It's like, yep, things are going to get worse and then the Lord is going to come and let me help that along.
Let me help make it worse. Never again, Christendom, never again. That is sadistic. It is it is it is hard for my for me to put myself in the mindset of of someone who would who would operate that way.
And it's the same mindset, by the way, that comes against, you know, like men, you know, going to the gym and getting physically fit and stuff like that. It's like it's like, where do you have to be? Like, look, it's one thing if you don't work out, like if you don't want to build Christendom, you don't want to help.
You know, OK, I get it. It's hard. It's not what you want to do. I get it. But then to go out there and to encourage others to do the same and actually to even go so far as to point to the people that are trying to work for this stuff and say, those guys wolf like.
Watch out for those guys. By the way, they're going to drown us. They're going to kill us to to put fear in people as if their brothers in the Lord are somehow. Against. Christ's people, it's really it's really a weird, weird thing for me.
And so I don't know, you know, if you understand kind of what I'm trying to say here, like like these these selfies to remind himself how evil Christians are when they get in power. Like it's sadistic.
It's masochistic. I don't get it. I don't get it. It's Reddit tier. It's like this is what Redditors would do. You know, it's it's. It's no wonder that they love James Lindsay so much. They're using his talking points against the church.
James Lindsay from the old days, you know, guys, it is not the case that cultural Christianity is bad. It is not the case that Christians are just as bad when they're in power as non-Christians would be.
It's not the case. The Holy Spirit of God is actually powerful. When a Christian is transformed from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, that's actually powerful. That actually has positive benefits to the to the Christian.
It actually trains them and teaches them and disciples them in righteousness. It doesn't forget somehow to train us in righteousness for the civil governing authority. Like, like, yeah, sure, you know, you're training righteousness for your personal life, the church, your family, but not in politics.
That's not the case at all. I don't I don't I don't. In some ways, I don't, you know, hate the people. I don't hate the people that put this perspective forward, not in some ways. I just don't because a lot of these guys were like me and they they they grew up learning the propaganda side.
They learned they learned that the Crusades were evil, that the Europeans that came over from on the Mayflower were evil. And they learned all that. They they were catechized fully into this liberal, secular view of history.
I get it. I learned all the same things. You have to unlearn some of that stuff because you have to realize that all of that stuff was propaganda for the secularists, for the liberals. A lot of the stories you heard about the Crusades, about the imperialists and all this kind of stuff.
It really isn't the way you have taught. You've been taught that it is. Those things were good. That doesn't mean every single thing they did was good. And that's the thing. It's like, yeah, sure. Christendom, you know, there were errors made in Christendom because even though they're believers and they're working for the glory of God and they're his deacon and they're self-conscious about it and they get it.
That doesn't mean that they're perfect. But it also doesn't mean that because we're not perfect that we shouldn't try to be perfect. We should. We should try to do literally every single thing that God would have us do and do it the way God would have us do it and and honor him in our law, in our everything.
We should try. We should try because in that way we honor him. Anyway, guys, I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.
