Reconciled to Trash World

Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. We are going to talk about an article that Christianity Today decided to put out there a few days ago from Richard Malle on theocracy.

Can you believe Christianity Today wants to talk about theocracy? I know I couldn't either, which is part of the reason

I read it. And it was very interesting where their take on this, of course, it's not what you think.

It's not really theocracy in the sense that you usually think of theocracy. It is this idea that God is sovereign, right, and Christ is

Lord, and we celebrate and reinforce that on Sunday. But the rest of the week, you should be a good

American pluralist. And so Richard Malle argues for this, and I want to go over it because I think he's taking a shot at Christian nationalism, quote unquote, even though he doesn't mention that.

But broadly speaking, this idea that there should be a default setting of Christianity. And social mores and laws.

And that's the foundation. And that's something that he wants to get away from, it seems. So I want to talk about that in this article today.

I already wrote a response on TruthScript. And so we are going to get into the details.

Before we do, though, I want to mention something coming up, and it's coming up fast, and you're going to want to sign up if you're a guy, because everyone that comes to this conference who

I've talked to has had a really good time, at least the people who share with me. Maybe someone hasn't had a good time, they just haven't told me.

But the vast majority of people, at least the ones that I've talked to, all have a great time. There's been some lasting relationships at this conference.

There's been people from that we try to pair people from the same area together if they're going to be bunking together. And so it's just a scenic, you know, the facilities are great, the scenery is great, the food is great.

It's just a great time. And it's in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, you can go to fundamentalsconference .com

if you want to find out more about that. I had a few questions about it, I'll just go over briefly. So the theme this year is the fundamentalist, and of course, that's a pejorative today.

We're going to talk about that, the history of fundamentalists, the good, the bad, the ugly, whatever.

I mean, but we're going to get into that topic and the fundamentals of the faith. And I think that's such an important thing now.

I mean, there's been, I'll just say this briefly, I have an episode that I'm going to do on this, I think soon. But there's been a few occurrences in the last few weeks where there's been these ecumenical moves.

One of them, I'll just say one of them, I'll tease this, but Turning Point USA has a very interesting lineup. If you look at the people who have, who they have speaking for them at their pastors conference, and people are moving into some of the same circles that don't necessarily align theologically on some of these fundamental issues.

And the question is, what do you do about that? How can you be a co -belligerent and how close can you get? We need to talk about some of this.

That's one of the reasons we're doing this conference, by the way, because we're entering this new paradigm. But you have

Richard Bargess, the head of the IFCA, he knows a thing or two about fundamentalism.

We have myself, A .D. Robles, my dad, Scott Harris, and we may add more to this, although it is just a weekend.

We want to make sure you have plenty of time to fellowship and enjoy the great outdoors. This is probably going to be peak fall.

We're doing it one week later than we did last year, because last year was just before the peak. And hopefully we get it dead on center this time and we get that peak fall experience in the

Adirondacks. You can't beat that. But one person did ask me today about the lodging and their single occupancy, double occupancy and triple quad occupancy options.

And all this means is that if you want a room to yourself and your own private bathroom, and of course, these rooms are heated, they're very nice.

Then you can pay $310 and you have the food, you have your lodging. It's a really good deal for a weekend, let me tell you.

If you don't want that, if you can't afford that, let's say, and double occupancy or triple occupancy or what you can afford, you can let me know when you sign up in the notes.

You can say, I want to be with these people. If you have friends that you want to or you're coming with people, you want to be with them or your son or something.

If you don't, someone today emailed me and said, I'm just coming alone. I'm going to do the triple quad occupancy option if I come.

What does that mean? Well, it means we put you with two people, hopefully, that are in your area. Many lasting friendships have started because of this.

You're going to want to check it out. Register now. If you're a guy, people have come as far as California, as far as Georgia, they'll drive up.

People drive from Michigan to come to this particular conference, this retreat. We give it different names every year, but it's hosted by my home church,

Grace Bible Church, and it's called the Fundamentals Conference this year. Fundamentalsconference .com.

Okay, this is the article that I wrote in response to Richard Mao. So if you want an abridged version of what

I'm about to say, you can go to truthstrip .com and check out the article, Reconciled to Trash World by myself,

Reconciled to Trash World. Of course, I'm going to be more expansive in my response to this article today because I think it's important is the ideas that Richard Mao espouses are still out there and they're dangerous.

Frankly, they're the kind of ideas that really neutralize Christian involvement.

At the very least, they dull the spear. They whatever pressure that we can apply and even whatever arguments that we have that we might want to trot out there in the public sphere to support

Christianity in a civil sense or a social sense. This really just takes the wind out of those sails and it really directs

Christians towards instead taking that energy and applying it to propping up some kind of pluralism.

And people who I'm talking to are already pretty convinced the pluralism thing isn't working out. So the purpose of this podcast isn't to necessarily argue against pluralism, though I may give some arguments against it.

The purpose of this is to expose what Christianity today is doing and not just Christianity today, but Big Eva in general.

This is a move that they've made for years. They're just still making the same move using different terms, trying to be clever about it.

And it's not clever. And we're on to it. And Richard Mao may be a very nice person on a personal level.

That is very possible. I'm very open to that. He gives me that sense if I ever watch his stuff. But he is a man who has done,

I believe, immense damage to the evangelical movement. And I'm going to talk about that more as we get into it.

Let's start by reading the first part of this article, the first paragraph. Oh, not this article.

That's my article. This article. Theocracy is not the enemy of pluralism is the name of the article by Richard Mao.

And the subtitle is God's rule is inherently true. And it doesn't require that we force it on anyone.

OK, that'd be the worst thing, right, to force Christianity on someone. And of course, the Christian flag is the picture for this article.

It's the header. Here's the first paragraph. A liberal acquaintance told me recently that while he generally dislikes evangelicals, he doesn't find me to be as bad as the rest.

At least you don't rant about wanting to establish a theocracy. I decided to accept what he said as a compliment, even though I regretted not coming clean with him about theocracy.

Now, let me stop there to say this about Richard Mao. He considered this a compliment.

And this is something you're going to find across the board in elite circles and evangelicalism.

These people, meaning the people running organizations like Christianity Today, they long for when

The New York Times gives them a pat on the head. And I can say that after years of watching them.

I wouldn't just come out and say that right away if I never met any of these people. But Russell Moore is the editor in chief.

He has for years wanted that pat on the head from The Washington Post. He has wanted to cultivate friendships and he's wanted the social capital that comes with these friendships from people that are on the left who have cultural power and cultural influence.

And so Richard Mao, in my mind, is no exception. This is this is the kind of thing that they would be proud of.

I would say that's the kind of thing I don't want to hear from my liberal acquaintance, to be quite frank with you.

I don't like my liberal acquaintance says you're a nice guy and you don't match the stereotypes. That's great.

The problem is, of course, the stereotypes. But you know, I want to be known. You know, we should have a good reputation with liberal, conservative, whoever.

We should have a general good reputation that we're honest people, that we follow God's law. We treat people with respect. That's not what

I'm talking about here, though. I don't think that's what Richard Mao is talking about. Richard Mao is saying that there's these this group of Christians that are political enemies.

Right. And the liberal recognizes them as political enemies. And the liberal is recognizing

Richard Mao is not one of those enemies. He's not the kind of person that represents the religious rights in this country, that elects people like Donald Trump.

And I'll show you in a minute concretely why I say that about Richard Mao. He's definitely not someone who's voting for Donald Trump. And so he gets an exemption.

He gets a pass. You know, that's a great compliment to someone like a Richard Mao. Let me give you a little background to Richard Mao before we read more of this article and get into the actual argument.

This is from my book, Christianity. I'm sorry. I'm confusing my books. This is from my first book on social justice called

Social Justice Goes to Church. The new left in modern American evangelicalism. You can still get this

John Harris podcast dot com. I'll send you an autographed copy. You can go to Amazon and get it if you want.

Barnes and Noble. It's wherever books are sold. So I talk about Richard Mao quite a bit.

In fact, I have a whole chapter, chapter five that is entitled Richard Mao. Let me read for you.

It's very it's pretty short. It's very short chapter. Like many of his contemporary young evangelicals,

Richard Mao experienced a crisis of faith prompted by the civil rights movement and Vietnam.

Ultimately, Mao left fundamentalism over its anti intellectual behavior, disinterest in social justice and separatistic spirit.

Though his mother was Dutch reformed, Mao's father was more fundamentalist. There's that word again. And so many so were many of his earthly influences.

He bristled against the legalistic rules inherent to the tradition throughout his young adulthood. And while a student at the

Evangelical Huffington College, as Mao transitioned to secular graduate schools at the

University of Alberta and then University of Chicago, he was exposed to new left ideas.

OK, so social justice ideas. But that's what they were called back in the 1960s. Days before starting this new chapter in his life,

Mao was profoundly impacted by watching Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a

Dream speech on television. He realized that evangelicals he respected were often dismissive of and in some cases even hostile to the civil rights movement.

Mao was equally disappointed in their reaction to Vietnam, an issue he found secular sources to be more helpful in morally navigating than evangelical ones.

In his new secular environment, Mao rubbed shoulders with Wittgenstein defenders,

Trotskyites and non -Marxist scholars or socialists rather. And he became an organizer in the

Students for a Democratic Society where he participated in political protests. Let me stop. Students for a

Democratic Society or SDS was a radical group that actually spawned, if I remember correctly, the

Weather Underground. You know, Bill Ayers, you remember him, his connection to Obama was part of SDS, as I remember, if I remember correctly.

It was one of those radical left wing groups that fomented the kind of campus disruption.

We're seeing that kind of thing now with the anti -Israel protests, but back in the 1960s, of course, it was anti -Vietnam protests.

And Richard Mao was part of that organization. Not only part of it, he was an organizer for them. So he's way on the left.

During this time, he drifted away from Christianity and spent a few years trying not to be an evangelical.

So I shouldn't say from Christianity, but from his, you know, the kind of Christianity that he grew up with. Instead, he explored alternative worldviews, enrolled in advanced courses in social thought and ethics, and attended ecumenical chapel services,

Catholic masses, and liberal Protestant congregations. However, Mao confessed the new left and the social gospel did not satisfy the deep places in his soul.

He needed a place to ground his new moral convictions. And there's many such cases of this, where someone tries to go into these very progressive, maybe more mainline kind of denominations, and they realize there's an emptiness to it.

And they yearn for that authenticity that they experienced in more charismatic or evangelical churches or Southern Baptist churches.

And they say there was something about that, but they don't want the politics. And so where can we find the social left stuff with whatever that authenticity is?

And that was Richard Mao. It was then he discovered Abraham Kuyper and his social thought, which helped him integrate his political activism with his

Christian faith. Mao also reached back into his religious memories and imagined a radicalism towards social evil, even in traditional hymns.

So he starts reading his new left ideas back into Christianity. And he finds it in the tradition of Dutch reform thought and Abraham Kuyper.

He's able to take the new left ideas he already had and find a place for them in Kuyper's thinking.

Of course, that's what he's doing, at least. Some of you who are Kuyper fans are getting upset at this point.

I'm the messenger. That's what Mao did and others who are influenced by him. So anyway, he says he expanded the meaning of I surrender all, you know, the traditional hymn,

I surrender all about him to include corporate concerns, such as our racism, our fondness for military solutions and our ethnocentrism.

So we got to surrender those things, right? Mao returned to evangelicalism while altering his version of it as he discovered more nuanced and complex understandings of Christ's love,

God's providence, and biblical interpretation. Richard Mao's example through his writing, such as political evangelism in 1973, an academic influence, first at Calvin College and then at Fuller Theological Seminary, he was the president of Fuller, helped light the way for other evangelicals attracted to new left ideas.

And his became the respected academic voice against the status quo while another young evangelical, Ron Sider, became the pastoral voice.

And that is the role Mao has had for decades now. He's the academic, he's the sophisticated one who shows that these new left ideas, these social justice ideas really do integrate with Christianity.

Now I'm going to read for you some other shorter sections from my book as we go along and as it's relevant.

But I wanted to read that to you just to give you a heads up on who Richard Mao is, where these ideas are coming from that you're about to interact with a bit.

So Richard Mao, we're going back now to the Christianity Today article, second paragraph. Richard Mao says, truth be told, my wife and I do belong to a pro -theocracy organization.

Indeed, we attend its meetings every week. In those gatherings, we learn about what it means to support a theocracy and we sing songs that are meant to strengthen our theocratic commitments.

The organization I'm referring to, of course, is our local church. And of course, you know, it's like I pull the rabbit out of the hat, but no one's impressed.

You know, we saw this coming. This is, it's a arrangement of words. It's sophistry.

It's not, you know, our local church, because we attend church, we must be theocrats. You know, that would make every

Christian who attends church a theocrat. Obviously, that's not what the liberal who complimented

Mao was talking about when he was talking about, quote unquote, theocracy, clearly. Theocracy literally means the rule of God, Mao says.

So he's going back to the etymology of the word. You know, this is what the word literally means linguistically.

So anyone who believes in the rule of God must be a theocrat. So he gets to now be part of this.

And you think about the play that's being run on you right now. So if you're someone who's concerned about, let's say, Drag Queen Story Hour and concerned about the

Biden administration, and I think it's this summer, the Biden administration is rolling out more Title IX regulations that are going to make separating males and females a federal offense, essentially, in the school system.

If you're concerned about that kind of thing, then, you know, and you're called a theocrat because of that.

You're called a Christian nationalist. You're called pejoratives. You're called a fundamentalist, maybe. Then, you know, you may resonate at least with where Richard Mao is coming from, because he's saying, look, if you just believe in the rule of God, you're a theocrat.

And so you look at that and you say, yeah, I believe in the rule of God, of course. But now he's going to channel that into neutralizing that fervor you have, that concern you have.

He's going to neutralize it. He's going to show that, yeah, of course, it's good to be you can be a theocrat if you believe in the rule of God.

But, you know, don't take that out into the public square and start forcing people to operate on Christian assumptions about things.

He says the idea of the church as a theocracy, however, is part of a much larger theocratic picture.

The universe itself, in all of its complex glory, is a theocracy. The Jewish community, Shabbat prayer captures well the

Bible's theocratic perspective when it begins with blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe.

Everything that exists is under God's rule. Now, it's a nitpicky thing, but just notice what he did there.

The Jewish community Shabbat prayer, right? So you're about a theocracy and it's Christian, right?

You know, he talks about allegiance to Jesus in the next paragraph. We're talking about a Jew, not an

Old Testament prayer. We're talking about the Jewish community Shabbat prayer. And, you know, OK, all right.

You know, I could I could go with that like this is an example, but he he's already setting up his pluralistic argument to extend the theocratic commitment that you might have to Jews as well, modern

Jews who are not Christians. They share this theocratic commitment somehow, right, already.

So there's this watering down going on of a specifically Christian and uniquely

Christian commitment to social mores and policy and all of that. He says everything that exists is under God's rule.

It is this theocratic arrangement defining the very nature of reality that gives believers meaning and hope in our lives.

But does that mean that believers like me should try to turn the United States into a theocracy? I think not.

God does not want me to force my theocratic understanding of reality on others. What God wants from people is that they freely offer their obedience to his will.

Now, remember what I just read for you. OK, I read for you, Richard. I was a young man. He's got these new left ideas.

It doesn't seem like the fundamentalists really that he was part of the those groups are interested in them.

And he's not satisfied with the liberal churches because there's just something missing. And so he wants this is the thing

I think that's missing. He wants meaning the meaning and the hope that believers have in their lives as a result of this theocratic arrangement, as a result of believing in the sovereignty of God and truly believing it.

Right. Not just saying you believe it, but then turning around and we don't really believe it.

It's just a nice story, which is what you'll find in a lot of these mainstream or I should say mainline churches.

Richard Mao wanted the real deal. Right. But he didn't want the conservative stuff. He didn't want the fundamentalist stuff.

He wanted to have his new left ideas. He wanted to be SDS. He wanted to have the socialist stuff, too.

And so so what he's saying is you could be a theocrat, meaning and you draw from this idea that God is in control, meaning and hope.

But don't go out and try to force any of your morals on others. You're uniquely Christian morals.

He wants morality force, but not Christian morality. That's the thing. And this is from Christianity Today, the premier evangelical magazine, supposedly, is telling you and you'll find this out as I go through some of these other paragraphs and we get to the end that Christian morality must never be forced.

Uniquely Christian morality, unique to Christians. It can't be forced on non -Christians. It can't be forced as a universal or something that's even unique to your society.

You need some things that apply to everyone, that everyone can participate in and kind of rally around.

But for you personally, it's really good to think about Christianity as something that gives you comfort because God's in control.

So he wants his cake and he wants to eat it, too, because the leftist stuff, you know, that applies to everyone. That's not uniquely

Christian. That's everyone's. So we can, we can be for that. And where there's, there happens to be, let's say, a overlap, we can be, you know, we can be

Christians in that sense. We can say, you know, when we're doing this because our motive is Christianity and it's rooted in Christianity. That's why we're fighting for social justice.

But it's something that applies to everyone. It's not uniquely Christian. Here's another paragraph, the next one.

I do not serve God's purpose in the world trying to, by trying to impose Christian laws on people against their own values and convictions.

Okay. So that doesn't serve God's purpose. I should not want everything that I consider to be sinful to be made illegal.

For example, and I don't, he says, I don't like blasphemous language on television. I hear it on Netflix.

So he's listening, you know, he hears this on Netflix, he goes, I'm not inclined to call for laws, banning these expressions.

Well, let me ask you this. Maybe you don't think you have the political will to do something like that. And that may be, but if you did, wouldn't you want that?

Wouldn't you want to clean up the airwaves? If it's not going to be the

Hays Code and they're not going to manage themselves, don't you want the FCC if they're going, you know, if the will is there to do it, don't you want them to ban some, some things, you know, blasphemy being one of them.

He says, no, he doesn't want that. He's not inclined to call for laws, banning these expressions. Why? Because it violates some higher law.

What's that higher law? Is it Christian? No, no. Uh, he may think it is, I don't know, but it's, it's this secular pluralistic neutral space that we all somehow occupy

Christians and Muslims and atheists and Jews and goes down the line, right? We are all in that.

And we all have certain expectations and a moral code that is universal to all of us and not uniquely

Christian. And we can impose that code, but we can't impose Christianity because that's not unique.

And atheists might think blasphemy is fine. So we should allow blasphemy, right? That's, I think that's the logic that you're hearing here.

That does not mean he says that I should withdraw into a live and let live posture content to wait for Jesus to return.

The Bible makes it clear that God wants me to be active in the society where he has placed me. All right. So here's the conundrum, right?

God wants you to be active, but don't ever force his laws on people that aren't Christians. Don't do that, but you should be active.

What does that activity look like? Well, I gave you a preview, uh, in, in my book from, uh, my chapter chapter five.

Uh, let me give you, uh, some more from my book and I'll explain what this means.

Richard Mao. Uh, let's, let's go to his, um, why this is important. I probably should have started with this, but we'll go to this now.

Richard Mao's influence on modern evangelicalism that's today cannot be underestimated. He serves both as the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, or he served,

I should say till 2013 and the association of theological schools and continues to speak at places like Dort university,

Pepperdine university, Southern seminary and Wheaton college and Northeastern university. His writings are featured on Biologos in all things, in all things, first things in Christianity today.

He has also contributed to think tanks influential in many evangelical seminaries, such as the Oikonomia network in the

Acton Institute. Mao received a lifetime achievement award from Christians for biblical equality, whose mission is to eliminate the power imbalance between men and women resulting from theological patriarchy.

Oh, he doesn't have a problem, I guess going against patriarchy as well as the Abraham Kuiper prize for excellence in reform theology and public life from Princeton theological seminary.

Russell Moore called Mao a friend. I've respected all my adult life who has done some masterful scholarly work on the nature of the kingdom.

Bruce Ashford, the former provost at Southeastern Baptist theological seminary. And this is, this is dated because when

I wrote this, he was still somewhat influential. Now there's a whole scandal surrounding him, or I shouldn't say there's a scandal surrounding him.

That's I'll take that back. There's, uh, let's just say Bruce Ashford has had it rough since he left

Southeastern, but when he was there and I was there during the time he was a provost, he was very big into Mao.

Uh, he said in his book, one nation under God, I'm especially indebted to Richard Mao whose writings have helped me understand what public faithfulness might look like in an increasingly plural and post -Christian

America. And many of his students were classmates of mine. Uh, and this is, this goes along with the article we're reading from Christianity Today by Mao.

This idea that things are getting increasingly pluralistic and post -Christian and Mao's the one that's going to help you navigate it.

Mao has the key. Mao has the answer. He can show you as a Christian, how you get through this and keep your

Christian convictions. No one, however, carries Mao's influence farther than Tim Keller, a popular author, former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, and co -founder of the

Gospel Coalition, who repeatedly cites Mao in his work. And I go into some of the detail on this, uh, in Generous Justice, uh,

God's Gospel and Life Study Book or Study Guide, Cultural Engagement, Center Church, Every Good Endeavor.

I mean, it's just like so many of Tim Keller's works. He is drawing on Richard Mao's influence.

Very influential because, not because of Richard Mao, people are reading him, but not as many as are reading someone like a

Tim Keller. And that's how his influence has gotten out there. You don't necessarily need to ever hear the name

Richard Mao. So think about what Tim Keller has done in his project, his, his Kuyperian, uh, project.

Think about the Gospel Coalition and what they've done and they're Kuyperian, right? And what kind of Kuyperian?

Richard Mao's Kuyperian. Yeah. Every, every square inch belongs to Jesus Christ. God is sovereign, theocracy, but you better hold onto that and don't let it, uh, run roughshod over secular pluralism because that pluralism, that's really important to maintain.

I'll explain a little more about how he sees this in Kuyper in a moment. Uh, but let's keep going with his

Christianity Today article. Mao quotes the

Apostle Peter. He says the Apostle Peter puts the mandate, the mandate, as we just saw in the previous paragraph, uh, which is to be active in society.

He puts that mandate this way, live such good lives among the pagans that they may see your good deeds and glorify

God on the day he visits us. First Peter 2 12. Peter, he says, is echoing the admonition of God that God gave through Jeremiah.

When the people of Israel were exiled in the pagan city of Babylon, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which

I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

In addition to witnessing to others about the power of the gospel, we can join them in working for God, glorifying social goals.

And let's stop there and talk about this. Can you lock arms with someone who does not share your theological commitments?

Maybe they can't justify even the moral position that you're both advocating for. Can you lock arms with them and say, we're both going to vote in this direction or support this policy, or we're going to make sure that our children are not groomed in class.

Well, yeah, you can. I'm sure you absolutely, you can. Why not? There's no biblical that that's not having fellowship with darkness because, uh, you're not, you're not sharing something in common with darkness.

You're, this is actually something that is very good, positive. It's light. This is something that's, uh, it may be even a natural instinct that God has placed in unbelievers, uh, in all people, including unbelievers.

Um, and you see this throughout scripture. You see, you know, Jesus said that even the evil fathers will give their son a fish when he asked for one, you see in the rich man and Lazarus, someone that's heading for hell is concerned about their family.

Uh, I mean, you see that you're worse than a unbeliever if you don't provide for your family. So unbelievers, I guess they do something good when they provide for that, right?

So, so there's this, this creational instinct that God has placed in people and, and that can be perverted and that can be, uh, you know, subdued and that kind of thing.

But that's, that's the way that God, uh, designed people as was his original intention. You can link arms with someone who wants to protect their children and feed their children.

Absolutely. That's not partnering with darkness, but you better not give the impression that the foundation for what you're doing is, is, you know, from there, let's say they're an atheist from their atheist worldview.

You better not endorse their particular brand of, um, you know, Mormonism, let's say, and calling it

Christianity, which is happening all too often today. And I'm seeing it, uh, more and more. So, um, so anyway, you can do what

Richard Mao's talking about, right? But it doesn't mean that, you know, now you're locked into it's the least common denominator.

So what, what, what, what I guess democracy decides is moral. You can support that. But if, uh, you know, people don't decide that.

And if it's too Christian, you can't like that's ridiculous. I'm gratefully says for the opportunity to live in a pluralistic society where I can learn from people with whom

I seriously disagree about religious beliefs, public policy, and moral lifestyles. For one thing, I can learn about the mistakes and misdeeds that Christians like me have made in the past.

That sounds, I really hate the way that sounds, uh, and still make today about important matters.

You know, you're going to, I just imagine Richard Mao, you know, I'm not saying he does this, but I, I I'm like envisioning him at the, the

LGBT pride parade or something. And, you know, learning the evil things that Christians have done from the gay activists or something.

And, you know, so good to live in this pluralist society to learn. Yeah. To learn from people who have a very broken moral compass, you're going to take your cues from them.

If there's people who are not Christians who want to support a Christian thing, uh, great, but I don't go to the world to say,

Hey, could you critique us? Could you, could you tell us like what we're getting wrong? You know, I'm not saying you can't listen to any wisdom outside of, uh, you know, uh, outside of what an

Orthodox Christian teaches. There, there is, um, of course there's worldly wisdom you want to watch out for based on the principles of, uh, that the world thinks are important, but there is a certain experiential,

I think, kind of knowledge that, uh, you know, just older people have and, and people who have lived in society, they should have, um, you know, you, you can listen to that, but to frame it this way that like, that's, that's really the positive thing about pluralism, you know, we need it.

We, you know, Christians need these other faith traditions to critique them or something. You know, don't you know, the saints are going to judge the world,

Richard Mao, you know, you have it a little backwards here, but this would be a good time for me to read another excerpt, the last excerpt that I want to read from my book,

Social Justice Goes to Church. And it explains how Mao uses Kuiper to justify his political leftist views.

I'm trying to think where I want to start with this. So Mao wrote a book, okay. 1974, there was, uh, let's see.

I think the book was actually 1973. Yeah. It's called Political Evangelism. I actually have it. His thesis was that political action was an aspect of the evangelistic, uh, evangelistic task of the church.

For Mao, a full gospel concerned with the whole man that Christ's atoning work offered liberation for people in their cultural endeavors, including political institutions and the making of public policy.

This discovery fundamentally altered the evangelist, uh, evangelistic endeavor by recruiting

Christians to participate in the redemption and transformation of institutional life. Proclaiming the

Christian gospel included confronting quote, sinful structures, unquote. In a 1974, two years later article in the post -American that's

Jim Wallace's outlet, Mao explained the payment that Jesus made through his shed blood was larger payment than many fundamentalists had to seem to think.

For even when they have sung the words with zeal, they have not seemed to acknowledge in their political and social lives that Jesus didn't indeed pay it all.

He died to remove the stains of political corruption and of all forms of human manipulation and exploitation. And he calls us to witness to and enjoy the first fruits of that full redemption.

So you're going to hear words when you start getting into these social justice circles, circles like full gospel, uh, full redemption, partial gospel.

They're trying to say that there's something lacking in the conservatives, the conservatives fundamentalists, really the

Orthodox, to be honest with you, they don't really have the full gospel because their good news doesn't include all these great socialist things or politically left things.

In this concept of redemption, Christ's payment for sin could potentially extend to human structures in which the majority of participants may not even be

Christians. Can you imagine that? The motive, see, like think about like a prison system where no one's saved, the guards aren't saved, uh, but you know, it's, it's now redeemed through the blood of Christ somehow.

The motivation behind political evangelism was simply the desire that political processes and policies preserve and promote the dignity of individuals.

This broadening of Christ's atoning work as a way to liberate individuals in their cultural endeavors, including the building of political institutions fit well into surprise, surprise, 19th century

Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuiper's theology of common grace. Kuiper whose writings now credited with helping him reconcile his political and religious beliefs wrote about three kinds of grace from God.

Now we've got to listen carefully. This is where we get theological. There's a particular grace, which applies to individual believers.

Okay. And we all know what that is, right? Uh, when we sing amazing grace, we're talking about that. There's a covenant grace, which applied to the community of saints.

And then there's a common grace, which applied to mankind as a whole. This is in Kuiper's framework.

Okay. Uh, and so there's a certain grace that, uh, God extends to the church as an institution or as a corporate body, uh, universally there's the grace that believers, uh, receive in salvation.

And there's a common grace, which applies to all mankind. Now you heard me just describe, uh, what

I would consider to be, um, I guess a natural instinct. I think instincts, the word

I use, maybe that's not the best word, but, uh, uh, just a natural part of the natural design that God has baked into creation that we are naturally inclined towards, uh, loving those people who are in proximity to us and taking care of children and that kind of thing.

That's a natural thing. Kuiper takes that, these natural things, right?

That really scholastic theologians have talked about, but this, this goes back to the early church fathers is across the board until recently, this was viewed as part of God's natural order.

He takes that and he makes that into that. That's common grace. Now this is like a special, uh, we're not,

I shouldn't mix up the words here. This is a, this, this is a common grace. So he puts it in a different category.

I would say he taught that God's common grace was responsible for things as varied as prosperity and health, uh, philosophy, art, justice, classical studies, human virtue.

It reigned in the curse of sin and served as the foundation for saving grace and unbelievers.

That's a key thing. It was the foundation for saving grace. It's the only reason that believers were able to, uh, ascertain salvation is because they already had this common grace in them.

This, if it sounds a little Arminian to you, some, some people have critiqued it that way and said, yeah, it does seem like there's like the spark of good or something.

Well, it's a common grace. Kuiper even referred to common grace as a work of redemption displayed by the reality of life itself.

So there's this, uh, this, the lines are fuzzy between redemption, between special grace and saving grace.

We'll say in common grace in Kuiper's framework, Kuiper scholars, Jordan Baylor and Steven Gray, Bill state common grace as Kuiper conceived.

It was a theology of public responsibility and cultural engagement rooted in Christian shared humanity with the rest of the world.

Now, hopefully light bulbs are going off. Oh yeah. That sounds like the pluralism he's talking about.

There's it's a universal shared thing with everyone, even those who aren't Christians. And it's so, so it can be

Christian and because it's, it's God's common grace, but at the same time, you know, Hindus also have this.

So we can work with them there. This is the basis for it. And provided a point of contact with the world whereby the church could appreciate the spark of common grace within unbelievers and cooperate with a purpose of shared political goals that serve the common good and furthered human flourishing.

Kuiper maintained that God's grace cooperated with particular grace or saving grace, you could say,

I suppose, in amazing harmony to direct God's work. Richard Mao later spoke of common grace as God's desire to see cultural development, move forward in creation, even under sinful conditions.

So now you should be thinking about all the social justice stuff and how so many wanted to get their cues from Kendi.

And well, I think of woke church, Eric Mason, he said the denazification program in Germany and the anti -apartheid program in South Africa.

These are good examples of, of how to apply or how to live out. I forget how he put it, but good

Christians can learn from them because it concerns the gospel. These are good examples of how to live out the gospel. You think these people aren't even

Christians. How is that possible? Because of this common grace stuff. That's what it does. People are going to be mad at me for this.

I'm already, I'm already anticipating it. John, how can you say that about common grace? John MacArthur uses the word common grace.

Well, clearly Richard Mao is not talking about John MacArthur. He's talking about Kuiper and a particular reading of Kuiper.

I could go on. There's other people, West Granberg -Michelson, Sharon Gallagher and others also tried to use this idea of common grace to justify their political leftism.

And you can read more about it in Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left and Modern American Evangelicalism. It's important to note, he didn't get the leftism,

I think, from Kuiper. He got the leftism from going to these secular institutions that were leftist.

And, but then he, this is the, what he found was able to make his leftism compatible with his

Christianity. Back to the article. Okay. Now that we're understanding Richard Mao and hopefully the wider evangelical world, including the influence of Tim Keller and the

Keller Center and the Gospel Coalition. Historically, Mao says American evangelicals had gone back and forth between two ways of relating to the larger culture.

So he talks about in the 1950s, there was this apolitical stance. He says, we like to sing patriotic songs.

Preachers regularly reminded us that we had a Christian obligation to show up as voters on election day, but we typically did not actively engage in political advocacy.

To be an evangelical citizen was to care, cast our votes for Republican candidates, to pray for God's blessing.

In all this, we were passive about politics and, you know, believed in the one nation under God. Now, you know, this is probably pretty standard and still today in many churches where there's just this instinct of like, we're on the right.

I mean, cause evangelicalism, Orthodox Christianity is going to naturally always be on the right. That's just, you can't force it into something else, despite what

Richard Mountain or Russell Moore want to do. But, but there, there was this understanding of what

I think Aaron Redd calls positive world, where we don't need specific Christian activists or political representation because we live in this world that already favors

Christianity. We have politicians, we have representatives, we have institutions. We don't need

Christian ones to advocate for Christians because our institutions already advocate for Christians, right?

That was the mentality. He talks about that. So that's one option. Option two, 1980, the new

Christian right led by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson. They became aggressively political, working for candidates to promote godly causes and explicitly guided by a theocratic project of returning to the vision of a

Christian America. Okay. And those are the bad guys usually in the story, right? Cause they became active and use the, use

Christians, really not maybe the church in some situations too, but they use Christians to promote their uniquely

Christian morality, policy, cultural mores, all of that.

Thus, he said, we have distance, either distance ourselves from active involvement in the political system or worked to take it over.

And he just assumes these are both bad stances. You can't be in either of these. These are two options that you should not choose.

We were cognitively a minority, content to sing as we did in my youth. This world is not my home. I'm just passing through.

Or we proclaimed ourselves to be a moral majority, boldly, a belting out, shine, Jesus shine, fill this land with the father's glory.

He likes to use songs a lot. Have you noticed that about Richard Mao? The people who actually read on me? I don't know if he's a musical guy or what, but that's what he's looking at.

He's saying there's this aggressive type, but there's this type that is passive and we can't be either of those, right?

Those are, those are scary. Those are, those are either scary or just useless. We can't be that.

Of course, though, he says there's a third option. Well, what would that be? One desperately needed today in our increasingly polarized society, this third option and evangelical willingness to labor patiently alongside others, persons of other faiths and of no faiths at all in seeking workable solutions to the complex challenges we face as a nation.

So is blasphemy on television a challenge? That's the question I'd have for him. He said, of course, you know,

I'm not going to work towards that. Well, that's a challenge we face, right? It's a complex thing. Technology's involved.

Policy across state lines is involved. You know, how does that work? Uh, free speech and all that, you know, that's a complex challenge we face, but no,

I guess we don't work on that one. Hmm. Uh, we work on stuff that applies to everyone, stuff that's pluralistic stuff that falls under common grace, right?

That's what we work on and our weekly theocratic gatherings. So cringy.

We evangelicals tell God in our human, uh, our, our prayers, rather our hymns, our sermons about our spiritual weaknesses as vulnerable human creatures.

When we walk into church, we also bring with us the hopes and fears that we experience in our political lives.

The self -righteousness that we so often exhibit in the public square does not fit well with what we know about ourselves in our deep place.

So this is another strategy I've seen with, uh, people will tell other

Christians will tell evangelicals who are involved in social or political things. Like how much time did you pray today? Are you re the whole thing is to like are you really a good person?

Do you really have business trying to purify the world when your soul's not pure? And the answer to that question of course is yes,

I do. Sure. I'm always going to have sin on some level. Uh, I'm getting sanctified, but, um, that does not mean that I don't have a responsibility to feed my children.

Right. I keep using that example because it's so fundamental and people get it like, just because let's say

I have a sin that I'm struggling with. Does that mean I don't feed my kids? Right. Do two wrongs make a right?

No, this is really basic stuff. But Richard Mao wants to say, you know, we were critiqued by the world.

That's so good. That's pluralism right there. It helps us. And then we're so self -righteous. Look at his view of Christians and his view of the world.

You know, he he's admitting in this article that he lives under the gaze of the non -Christian liberal who he just wants that, that, that approval.

He wants the critique too. He wants to know what they think and what we think must be backwards.

And it's just, we're just, we mess it up when we try to go into the public square. We can't do it.

Uh, we, we can't be Christians and do it. We got to link arms with all these other people who apparently have some wisdom that I guess

Christians just don't seem to have. All we have is God's word. I mean, my goodness. One of the heroes of the faith he says is

Abraham Kuyper. Oh wow. How did he get in here? He proclaimed his inaugural address at the university he founded.

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our lives. Uh, long story short, let's see who, uh, where Christ says mine, right?

That's the famous quote. I find that inspiring manifesto to be a motivation for how I am to live as a theocrat in contemporary life.

There's always a temptation for us to answer that rallying cry in an arrogant and imperialistic manner. As if all we have to do is go out there and grab hold of all those square inches in the name of Jesus.

Properly understood though, theocracy requires a humble spirit. Peter tells us that we need to give a reason for the hope that we have in Christ with gentleness, respect.

So Jesus claims every square inch of creation as his own. Whenever he goes in our lives, we are standing on sacred ground.

Uh, so he's saying really though, the whole thing here is that, uh, we it's vague, but he's throwing out these appeals to humility and, uh, to be more reasonable and gentle and, and to do so according to whose terms though.

That's like the Bible does say to be these things according to who, according to whose version of gentleness gods or what the world perceives as gentle.

That's the question. And I don't think he does a good job with this because if you read the article, you get the impression he's saying the world, what they think is general.

So we don't go and we, you know, we don't claim these things for Jesus. They already belong to him. Yeah, of course, of course he has his crown rights are on every

Adam. He doesn't, uh, obviously, uh, that's not the point though. It's not. He gives us stewardship that from the beginning,

Adam had a task, right? God owned. This isn't a perfect state to God owned the whole world, all the animals, everything was in a good state, but Adam had a job to organize, to take dominion.

Uh, Eve was his helpmate in that. So, you know, there is a purpose, a structure, uh, and this was out in public.

And when sin came, of course there was the fall and, uh, the curse of sin. And of course now we have a law that we are to keep.

We have, uh, purposes. We have three purposes in the law, right? Um, the law does function to convict us of sin.

Uh, the law does function in a way to tell us what the right thing to do is, but also restrains sin.

It also, uh, when the government uses, it helps us to carve out a, what a decent and quiet life looks like.

That's why we should pray for those in authority, right? If we have their favor to live that decent and quiet life, what are they doing?

They're holding back the dam. They're, they're, they're helping to bring that aspect of the law that, uh, restrains the evil forces of sin.

Um, I don't even know where to go for it. So we're ending, we're landing the plane and someone criticized me by the way, the other day say, who was it?

It was, I think it was that Brian on Twitter that Brian, he, uh, he said, he does, you know, we, we shouldn't evangelical podcasters shouldn't say landing the plane at the end of their podcast.

And that means I'm just going to land the plane even harder, Brian, I'm sorry. We're about to land the plane. And my evangelical youth,

I was taught Hudson Taylor's famous saying, of course I love Brian. Okay. So, um, nothing personal.

I was taught a Hudson Taylor's famous saying Christ is either Lord of all or is not Lord of all. I keep learning more about what it means to represent the cause of the gospel in a gentle and respectful manner.

The God is majesty. We theocrats worship not only sends us into the world over which he rules, but assures us that wherever we go, he will be with us.

He invites us to join him in those square inches that are occupied by precious human beings who suffer. Uh, let's see, we live in times when our fellow human beings desperately need evangelicals, uh, who, for whom being theocratic means actively serving the cause of loving savior.

So he's saying for those scary types, those theocratic types, those Christian nationals types, those fundamentalist types, those religious right types, you know, that this is the category we're talking about for those guys, then, you know, what we, what they, what the world needs again, framing it in terms of what's, what's the world thing.

What did they need? Uh, they need to see us channeling all of that energy and all, you know, all that rage you have about what's happening in the schools to your kids or whatever in society.

What did the parade that went down, uh, the street from you the other month, last month, you know, with all the rage you have about these things and a righteous indignation, uh, channel that into something else, uh, channel that into really being winsome.

It doesn't use the word, but that's what this is about. I hope that me going over this article, giving you some background who

Richard Mao is, and he's one of the founding fathers of progressive evangelicalism gives you a fuller understanding with what we're still facing.

Uh, it's, it's not just in Keller and Russell Moore. It's all their proteges. It's the

Keller center at the gospel coalition. It's, you know, the people involved in this whole project are trying to convince you desperately that all is peace when there is no peace, they say peace, peace, there is no peace.

There's a, there's war and we're, you're in it and it's coming for you, whether you want it to or not.

And if you choose to, and really Richard Mao, this is a funny part to me. If you choose to be like Richard Mao and put your head in the sand about those things, you know, he, he wants to use the profanity on TV episode because maybe that's less controversial, but what about, or blasphemy on TV?

What about, uh, you know, something that's a little more current, at least debated more currently. What about transgender athletes?

You know, what does Richard now do with something like that? Does that get put in the category of common grace? And this isn't uniquely

Christian. Do you bring your Christian motivation to it? What, he wants to knock the people that he calls fundamentalists.

He grew up with because they weren't involved enough and they, that, that wasn't the way to go, but really what he's calling you to do is to not be involved in certain things, certain things, the world doesn't want you to be involved with, but be involved in these social justice things.

That's fine. Be involved in that. That's being a true Christian. It's, I think internally self -refuting.

I think it's hypocritical and I think it's a play that's being run on you. It is to neutralize you.

And that's why I called this in the article that I wrote about it being reconciled to trash world.

And if you want a shorter version to share, in fact, I would appreciate it if you share this article called reconcile the trash world on your social media.

Uh, and it gives this argument, uh, not only gives the argument in a shorter form, but it helps support truth script.

Uh, you know, we need to be answering these things. And in a clear way, not just what

I, what I see from a lot of guys who are evangelicals on the right, who don't like what Richard miles doing people like him, they just become very aggressively pro right -wing, which, you know, okay, that's,

I'm not complaining about being that, but they want to just, um, uh, sometimes

I don't think we necessarily understand where the other side's coming from the deceitful tactics that are being used against us.

And it's not just a left, right thing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It's not just like they're on the left. Let's be on the right.

It's, it's more than that. There is a conflation going on with these more left lean evangelicals where they see the gospel itself.

I mean, we're talking about fundamental doctrines here. Uh, they see redemption as part of the social justice project.

Somehow they Christianize that whole movement. So it's not just being on the left and like, you're a leftist

Christian. I'm on the right, like Christians on the right. Aren't on the right saying generally,

I don't see this like, Hey, you want to have the gospel. You want to be a real Christian. Then you got to do these things.

You got to be an activist like me. You got to support these policies. You got to vote this way. I don't really see that.

I do see people saying we should be involved. We should like, what I'm saying right now is we should support

Christian public morality and, and flesh that out. What that means for you. Cause God might have a different way that, that, you know, different application for you than me, but what we don't see me saying or others who are like -minded, we don't, we don't say like, well, if you really want to be a real

Christian and have the gospel, then you better go out and support the second amendment. That doesn't really, that doesn't happen. We just say that that's ethically in keeping with our

Christian commitments, our cultural Christian commitments. That's what we'll say. Well, for the left, it's not that, and it's not, and I'm even searching for words myself.

It's not even just the left. Like this is, this is culty stuff that you're reading from Richard Mao in a mainstream, supposedly

Christian magazine. Like this is fusing together. A new religion is what's going on here.

So if you want to know more, you know, again, I've written about a lot of this in social justice, goes to church, check that book out,

God bless. And don't forget to sign up for the men's retreat. We'll talk about some of this stuff. Fundamentalsconference .com

again is the website. You don't want to miss this. You really don't. If you, so many of the guys that go to this tell me like, this is the conference

I don't want to miss. This is, this is the experience that I really enjoy of any weekend conference.

You know, I could go to other places that, you know, if you're a man, you know, you could, you could go to the

AC room that's got drywall everywhere and, you know, be with a bunch of strangers and meet some people you'll never actually talk to and try to get their autograph maybe and say, thanks.

And that's it. You know, you could do that thing and spend a lot of money getting there and paying for your hotel. And, you know, and I'm not saying that's all wrong.

That's good. That's good. I mean, I go to conferences like that sometimes, but I just think for most guys, this is so much more rewarding.

You're out in nature, you can kayak, you can fish, you can go hiking, you can actually spend time with guys.

You can pray together whenever you can be in your environment with other guys.

And, and that's why people are smiling in this picture. So there you go. Check it out. Fundamentalsconference .com.