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Why Alternative Christian Media Is Needed

So yesterday, a few hours after I recorded the video you're about to watch, I saw Marcus do a live stream on Facebook. And Marcus, in that live stream, touched on a lot of the same topics that I was touching on in my video that I had recorded earlier that morning.

We had not communicated about this. We didn't plan this, but just providentially, we were thinking about very similar things and about really how organizations like the Gospel Coalition and others are becoming obsolete by some of the actions that they take, or actually, rather, what they choose not to do and what they choose not to get into.

And I agree with Marcus. He actually approaches it from a little bit more of a technical sort of perspective. I approach it from a little bit more of a philosophical perspective, but we are kind of touching on the same points.

And so I wanted to, I'm gonna link to that video in my video in the comments section, not the comments section, I'm gonna link to it in the description of this video. But I want you to take a look at it.

I mean, after you're done watching my video and hearing me out, I want you to hear what Marcus has to say, because it's very interesting how relevant it is to what I was saying as well. And I wanted to frame this conversation a little bit too, because in this video, I talk about what, in my opinion, is the danger of an organization like Gospel Coalition and the amount of influence they're able to have about what gets talked about and what gets ignored and how people approach certain things and all of that.

So I talk about the danger of Gospel Coalition, but at the same time, I agree that they are becoming obsolete. Like the approach that they take, the approach that they don't take, the ways that they go about talking about these things is becoming obsolete.

They're becoming part of the legacy media. And I'm gonna tell you what I think one of the solutions is, and I think you'll probably understand that based on the title of this video. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this.

I hope it's helpful for you. And please understand, I don't hate the Gospel Coalition. I don't hate the people of the Gospel Coalition, but I think that they would be well-served to sort of change up some of their approaches and really some of the ideology that they have as well.

The Mission of Fight, Laugh, Feast

Hope this is helpful. Enjoy. You know, when Gabe Wrench reached out to me for the first time to broach the subject about joining the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network for a podcast, I told him at the time that if I could have handpicked a group to join in a blog or a podcast or video network or anything like that, if I could have handpicked a group, I would have picked the CrossPolitik guys.

That definitely would have been at the top of my list. And I was considering other blog ventures and other things like that. So I was so happy when he reached out to me and I was glad to join. I didn't have to think about it too much.

And there's a very specific reason for that because I think what the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is doing is so necessary. It's so needed right now. And I don't mean necessary in the sense that if Fight, Laugh, Feast didn't exist that all hell would break loose.

That's not what I mean. What I mean is that it's an important mission that these guys have. And you can even tell even in the name Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, that these guys are doing something that is somewhat unique in the modern Christian movement.

And it's not totally unique. There are other blogs, other podcasts, other people that are doing similar things. So what I wanna talk about today is really why Fight, Laugh, Feast is so important in my opinion and really what the aim is, what the goals are for me anyway in the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.

Fake News and Agenda Setting in the Media

And it starts with the problem of fake news. It starts with the problem of fake news. Fake news has been talked about so much in the last few years. Donald Trump, a presidential candidate was talking about fake news during his election.

And that message resonated with people because people have had this idea that the news has been fake news for a very long time. I remember before I was even a Christian, I knew that fake news was a problem.

I knew that there was an agenda being pushed and that people were outright making up news. I mean, sometimes that's what it is. They just make up entire stories. They're all false. Like the Trump collusion, for example.

That was just made up. That was just made up. And people were talking about it for months. And so much media was spent talking about this fake story that was fake from the beginning. There was no evidence of collusion, which means there was never any evidence of collusion.

It was completely made up. So that's sometimes what fake news is. Sometimes fake news is just more about skewing the facts. Like with the Covington kids, for example. Like they use some bare bones facts.

There's a kid with a MAGA hat on. There's a native American guy shouting gibberish to this kid. There's some black Hebrew Israelites there. And that's what was going on. They just kind of made up the narrative surrounding it.

Oh, this is a bunch of racists. So like there's fake news like that too, where it uses a kernel of truth and then just twists it. And so people have thought this for a while. In fact, before I was a Christian, I knew that CNN was fake.

I knew that Washington Post was fake. And so what I used to do is I used to read and consume material from other sources, right? Like I used to watch a lot of Russia Today stuff. I used to watch a lot of Al Jazeera stuff.

And I'm under no delusions that that's impartial. Like Al Jazeera is not impartial. And they're open about this. They're open about this. Al Jazeera is putting forward a perspective. But in my mind, I thought, look, if I have propaganda from CNN, and then I have propaganda from Al Jazeera, somewhere in there, there's gonna be some facts that I can kind of glean.

And I just have, I'll have to wade through the nonsense, but I'll get some facts. I'll definitely, if I listen to Al Jazeera, I'll get a perspective that I haven't heard before. It's not all true, obviously, it's not all facts, but I'm gonna get some facts that I haven't heard before, at least from CNN or MSNBC or Washington Post or whatever, New York Times, all these other propaganda sources from the United States.

And so that's what I used to do when it comes to that. But then there started becoming these alternative media sources and things like that. And real journalists, for example, like Julian Assange. I mean, that's a person who's putting out stuff that you'll never get on CNN or MSNBC.

And he has a political perspective too. He has a political perspective too, but it's very different than the political perspectives of CNN or Fox News. It's a very different perspective. It's more about getting information to the people.

It's more about individual freedoms. And so you're gonna get all kinds of information you'll never get from CNN. The Veritas Project, you remember that with Acorn and the prostitution stuff and all that.

Yeah, you'll get stuff from them that you'll never get from other organizations. That's just a fact. What about the abortion clinic thing? The Planned Parenthood sells baby parts stuff. You'll never get that from CNN, right?

So there's these alternative kind of upstart media organizations. And some of them are fairly organized, but they're not that big. Because the reality is it doesn't take much money to put media out there these days.

And that's, you know, a lot of people see that as a bad thing, but I see that as a good thing. Because here's the thing. Yeah, there's gonna be some nonsense out there. There's gonna be some lies out there.

But because it's all decentralized, we don't have to count on unreliable people. Like we don't have to count on a small cabal of news reporters to tell us what's what, right? And here's the reality of fake news.

The real problem with fake news is not the completely made up stories. That's easy enough to sniff out. It's not the skewed narrative stories. Those are easy enough to sniff out. But what it really is is the ability they have, the undue, the disproportionate ability they have to control the conversation, to tell us what is important, to tell us what we can talk about.

And that's, you know, the Covington kids, for example. If you really step back for a second and think about that story, what was newsworthy about that? What was newsworthy? If I was just a kid, a group of school kids, and a crazy liberal Native American man, you know, doing incantations to the demons, how did that affect your life?

How does it affect my life? It doesn't. In no way it does. It's not news. In fact, that very week, things happened that had way more impact on us that went unreported. In fact, now, we're still talking about Covington.

A lot of people, including myself, are still dropping their hot takes about Covington. And yet there are things that are happening that are much more relevant to our everyday lives, yet the news organizations were able to control the topics of conversation.

That's one of the big threats of Trump, by the way, because Trump tweets. He can set the agenda of what's talked about. All he has to do is tweet. And all of a sudden, the topics of conversation has switched.

You see what I'm saying? So that's one of the geniuses of Trump. But the reality is that CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, they have this ability to give us what is important. What's important to them becomes what we talk about.

So whatever's important to the higher-ups at these organizations becomes important to us. It's what we talk about. They set the agenda. They tell us what's newsworthy. They tell us what to talk about and what's not allowed to be talked about and what we're gonna debate and what we're not gonna debate.

Why the Gospel Coalition Has Become Obsolete

That's the big problem with fake news. That's the big problem with these organizations. Hold on a second. And so in the Christian community, we have very similar situation going on. Organizations like the Gospel Coalition, organizations like Nine Marks, organizations like the ERLC, they have that same power.

Now, they don't make up stories that much. They don't make up stories. It's not like fake news in the literal sense, like it's just a completely made-up story. They don't do that kind of stuff. But what they do do is set the agenda.

They tell us what's allowable and what's not allowable, what we can debate, what we can't debate, what is. I mean, in a lot of ways, they set the bounds of orthodoxy. They set the conversation. And in that way, they've become dangerous.

They've become obsolete because the reality is that there are lots of topics that we need to discuss and lots of ways to discuss them, these topics, that Gospel Coalition won't touch with a 10-foot pole but need to be touched because every day, common folk like you and me, it's important to.

It affects their lives every day. See, the Gospel Coalition's really good at the milk, right? Like, they'll get their milk, the milk that the Gospel Coalition provides, the foundations of the faith, you know, they get that right.

So their milk is adequate for survival. But any time they step into application and how it affects your lives and what are the outworkings of that gospel, that's when they start to get about this shallow and that's when their stuff doesn't help you thrive as a Christian, does not help you build things as a Christian, does not help you progress in any way.

In fact, it's all regressive. It's all regressive, a lot of their applications. So the milk is fine. If you wanna go there and get some theological insights from a foundational basics perspective, that's fine.

That's totally fine. And I think that there's a need for that because every child needs to get through the milk phase first. But when it comes to meat, when it comes to the real application of your everyday life, when it comes to your sanctification and building and thinking about the next generation, the next generation after that, and thinking three steps ahead and being prophetic into the culture, Gospel Coalition is obsolete.

And I think, you know, if you count on Gospel Coalition to give you the whole story, you're not gonna hear the whole story. And that's where Fight, Laugh, Feast and alternative media sources come into play.

Why Fight, Laugh, Feast Offers a Better Christian Perspective

Because if you look at, you know, Gospel Coalition has talked about the election of Donald Trump. And the reality is that the leaders of the gospel, they don't get it. They don't get why you voted for Donald Trump.

They don't get it. They think, oh, Evangelicals, they were so fearful. They were just so scared of like boys being in the girls' room and then they voted for Trump. They didn't know what to do. As if you're some kind of fool, as if you're just this fearful person.

That's not why you voted for Trump. That's not why you voted for Trump. Some of them will even say, some of the Gospel Coalition, well, it's actually because they're just afraid of dark people, they're racist.

And that's why they voted for Trump. Like, this is how their social analysis, this is how deep it is, it's about this deep. You're racist, that's why you voted. That's not why you voted for Trump. They don't get it.

They don't get what's important to common folks. And so look, the Bible speaks to every issue that's of concern to you, the Bible speaks to it. And there's a lot of depth to it. And there's some meat there.

There's stuff that you could hold onto, right? It goes beyond just, oh, we gotta care for the sojourner. Yeah, of course we gotta care for the sojourner. Everyone agrees with that. But the Bible actually tells you exactly how to do it.

It tells you what to do. It tells you everything you need to know to live in this modern world. Everything you need to know is in the scripture. We don't have to borrow from democratic politics. We don't have to do it.

We don't have to do it. And so if you wanna thrive and you wanna eat the meat of scripture, not just the milk, then you need something else. And I think Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is uniquely positioned to do this because all you gotta do, listen to a couple episodes of CrossPolitik, for example.

Listen to a couple of episodes of AD on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. That's my show. Let me just give you a shameless plug, right? You're gonna see some things that you will not see on Gospel Coalition.

You see, we speak plainly. We will tell you what's what. I just saw an episode the other day of CrossPolitik where it was talking about this girl who got suspended from school because some boys, they were trying to protest girls being allowed in the boys' room, which is insanity, right?

First of all, you won't ever hear anyone from Gospel Coalition describe that as insanity, but it is, it's insanity. So some boys were doing that, and what they did to protest, which was a very bad move in my opinion, what they did was they went into the girls' room and there was a girl there, and she's like, get the heck out of here.

And they didn't leave or whatever. And so she needs someone where the sun don't shine. She got suspended for that. Now, here's something you won't hear on the Gospel Coalition. Here's what Toby said. Good, good for her.

I would teach my daughter to do the same thing. I would teach my daughter to do the same thing. If some boys come in and you feel threatened, you know where to hit them. You know where to hit them if you have to.

Try to escape, try to get out of there, try to avoid the fight, but when it comes time to throw down, if you have to, do it efficiently. You won't hear that on the Gospel Coalition. You won't hear that kind of stuff.

See, we speak to you plainly. We speak to you like a man. We speak to you with plain words. We don't use flowery sounding, nice sounding, you know, smooth speech. We don't call sin, not God's best for you.

We don't call sin, oh, we just made a mistake. We don't say that, you know, it's all, you know, that's just not really in line with human flourishing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look, there are times for soft language.

And this time in our culture, this is not the time for it. This is not the time for it. We speak to you like men. We expect you to speak like a man. We expect you to engage with the world like a man. And so we are gonna speak to you, not like a child, but we're gonna speak to you like a man.

You won't get that from the Gospel Coalition. Lots of people have noticed that the Gospel Coalition has gotten more and more feminine over the years. And that's just the reality. Look, I grew up on these guys.

All of these guys, I came up in the faith, you know, loving and learning from. All of these guys from Gospel Coalition, I love these guys. But the reality is that they are getting soft. But the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is not soft.

Now, here's what we are doing. You're gonna get perspective from the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network that you will never see on ERLC. You will never see it on Nine Marks. And I'm not saying those, again, I'm not saying those sites are worthless.

They're great for milk. But if you want some meat, if you wanna learn how to engage with the culture like a man, Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, even the very name, you'll see this, fight, fight. The first letter in the FLF network, fight.

See, here's the thing, fighting is necessary at times. Look, you don't wanna go around picking fights all the time. But when it's time to throw down, you better know how to do it. You better know how to do it.

Bible talks about this all the time. Even within brothers, we can fight. Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Iron sharpening iron, that's not like a very calm process. That's a violent process, not physically.

This is a metaphor. But if you've ever seen, you know, someone trying to build a blade, right? Ever watched a show where they're building swords and stuff? It's fire and sparks and all that kind of stuff.

It's a violent process. The wounds of a friend, the Bible says. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Wounds, where do you get wounded? Where do you get wounded?

In a confrontation is where you get wounded, in a fight is where you get wounded. So fighting is necessary. You go to Gospel Coalition, you're not gonna see that kind of stuff. You're gonna see the best you'll get.

I mean, I looked for any kind of interaction on the statement on social justice, and I didn't really see anything. The best you'll get from a confrontation on social justice is, well, here's the one side, here's the other side.

I'm not taking sides here. I'm just gonna give you the facts. And, you know, I'm just asking questions here, like Rob Bell or something. Like that's the most you'll get. No, Christians need to know how to fight.

Even Paul talks about this. He says, look, there are some factions among you that need to be there. There are some factions among you that need to be there. We have to fight sometimes. We have to fight, we have to kick around ideas.

We have to strategize. We have to be shrewd at times. And we can still love each other. We can still do it. If you see on the Fight and Laugh Feast Network, they love each other, but they're willing to fight.

They're willing to talk things out like men. We need to be able to do that. We can't just ignore these issues. We can't just ignore these issues. Go into a gospel coalition conference. If you're not gonna find people kicking around ideas that really matter to everyday lives, you're not gonna find it.

Fight, Laugh, and Feast as a Christian Way of Life

Laugh, that's the second letter. Fight, laughed, laugh. You know, one of the criticisms that I've gotten over my material, in fact, one of my mentors, one of the guys who brought me up in ministry, he's since disowned me.

And one of the reasons he's disowned me is because he said that I enjoy myself too much in my videos. You got that right, I enjoy myself, absolutely. There are times to laugh. There are times to mock.

There's times to ridicule. Look, the Bible, Christ himself found time to make jokes. And he was serious. He had a serious message for the world. And I feel like I have a serious message for the world.

Look, when I did my reparations week and we talked all about reparations for five days in a row, that was a serious topic. I think that's a very serious issue of justice and the gospel and the Bible, forgiveness.

I mean, these are all topics that are central to the gospel. But you know what? I made some funny videos too. It's not all just serious. I laughed, I laughed, I made jokes. Because you know what? There's a time for that.

And you know who knows that there's a time for that? Men know there's a time for that. Because men lead serious lives in many ways. There's a lot of serious responsibility on their shoulders, but at the same time, God's world is good and we can enjoy God's world.

And so of course, you're not gonna find that kind of laughter. You're not gonna find that kind of joking. You're not gonna find that kind of humor on Gospel Coalition, but you will find it on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.

Because those men know how to enjoy themselves. It's just that simple. And finally, feast. So they're gonna fight on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. They're gonna laugh on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.

And they're going to feast. They're gonna enjoy God's provision because God has provided to us so abundantly here in the United States, so abundantly. And we're in a battle. It's a serious thing, but guess where God prepares a table for us?

In the midst of our enemies, He prepares a table for us. In the middle of the battle, He prepares a table for us and we can feast. We can enjoy ourselves. You'll see on CrossPolitik, they all share a cup of coffee.

They all share some scotch or whatever it is that they drink. And they're having a good time. And they're talking about serious things. And they're joking and they're serious at times. And there's fighting and there's sparks that fly.

And you know what? All of it, all of it is necessary at times. Now, I'm not saying those brothers are perfect. They do things perfectly. I'm not saying I'm perfect. You know, some of my jokes land, some of my jokes don't.

Some of my jokes, people don't like some of them, they do. But you know what? I am trying to do what I believe is faithful to God. And I'm looking at all of the actions of Christ. I'm looking at all of the actions of Paul the Apostle.

And I'm trying to emulate what is good in the Bible and try to use the tactics that they use in different situations and things like that. And you're not gonna get that full orbed approach from the Gospel Coalition.

What you're gonna get is milquetoast stuff. Oh, you know, I mean, homosexuality is not God's life, best for you. And you know, it's not human flourishing if you mutilate your body. And you don't even get it.

They won't even say it that way. They use the world's categories, the world's terms. And they set the agenda for too many people. For too many people, they set the agenda for what is allowable for a Christian.

And oftentimes, it's a very feminine version of Christianity. Now, Christianity is not a feminine religion. It's not a feminine religion. Oh, it's for females, just like it's for males. But if you look at the scripture and you see Paul telling his followers, his disciples to act like men, to be strong, what he is telling them is to fight, laugh, and feast.

A Call to Support Fight, Laugh, Feast

And so here's my ask for you. You know, right in the beginning when I first started doing my videos, I was engaging with somebody who's helping me with some of the online content. He asked me, what is your goal?

How would you know you've had victory? And I hadn't really considered that question before because I wasn't trying to be a full-time YouTuber or anything, so I hadn't really considered what was my end game here, what was my goal?

And it's hard to win a battle if you don't know what victory looks like, right? Like if you're playing chess, you didn't know that the point was to checkmate your opponent, you're probably not gonna win.

You hit what you aim for. You hit what you aim for. And so here's my goal. When that person asked me that, here's what I said. I said, look, I want Gospel Coalition and other organizations like it. I don't want them to be ended.

I don't want them to die. I don't want them to close up shop, but I want them to be viewed like the way people view CNN. They know their propaganda. They know that there's gonna be a bare-bones kind of facts that you'll get from them, but you cannot trust them with the analysis.

You cannot trust them to give you the whole story. You cannot trust them to set the agenda for you, to tell you what is important. You need to use other sources. And so here's my ask. Help the Fight Laugh Feast Network do that.

Help me do that. That's what I do on my YouTube channel. Join the Fight Laugh Feast Club. Join as a member. We have different options. I think it starts at $10 a month, and there's other options as well.

You'll get all kinds of exclusive materials and media. You'll get discounts on things. You will help, and more importantly, you will be helping us provide an alternative to the stuff you will get from Gospel Coalition.

Again, if you wanna go to Gospel Coalition and get some of that stuff, fine, I'm okay with that. In fact, if you wanna look at their propaganda, that's fine too, but just understand that you're not getting the whole story, and we will talk to you like men.

We will talk to you straightforward. We will give you the facts. We will give you our perspective. We're not, look, we're not impartial, and we don't pretend to be. We don't pretend to be. Our goal is to be completely biblical in every way, and we'll do it in an overt, deep kind of way, not a shallow way.

We're not gonna tell you, well, you know, God says to support the sojourner, and so therefore, you can't support the wall. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna talk to you about this from a deep perspective because God tells you more than, you know, love the sojourner.

He tells you how to do it, and we can talk about those things in a deep perspective, not like you're a child, but like you're a man who can understand these things. We have a lot of faith in the listeners to understand these things at a deep level, so join us.

Help us do this. Help us do this because, look, the Gospel Coalition's well-funded. It's got a lot of influence, and right now, Fight Left Feast has a smaller influence and less funds, but there's no reason it needs to stay that way.

There's no reason it needs to stay that way. Join as a Fight Left Feast Club member. Help us out with this mission. I think it's a worthy cause. Even if you don't agree with us on everything, that's fine.

Even if you don't agree with our methods and everything, that is fine, but you need to understand, I think you should agree, that an alternative is needed. We cannot trust ERLC, Gospel Coalition, Nine Marks to set the agenda for us because they don't get it.

They don't get what the common man is interested in, why people voted for Trump. They don't understand it. They don't understand it, but everyday folks like me have a little bit more understanding, I think, have a little bit more understanding, and there's a lot of other people like that, too, so we're not the only ones doing this.

So I would urge you to consider supporting the Fight Left Feast Network, supporting my YouTube channel, as well, and we will do our best to provide good alternative media, essentially. I don't know if we wanna be alternative media, but just a different perspective, a different approach, to hopefully give you a more holistic worldview in Christ.