Rightly Ordered Affections

Secular Rituals, Diversity, and the Replacement of Religious Meaning

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. It has been an interesting past week for me, for many reasons. I've been really busy and I haven't been able to get to all the stories I wanna get to, but most of them I have now in a very organized fashion.

I just spent a few hours this morning just looking over some of the things I've screenshotted. That's how I often do things now. I just screenshot it on my phone, and whether it's a conversation or a new story I see, and then something that in my mind, I think, well, that's something that is important.

That's something that people should know about. That's something we can talk about for whatever reason. And then I go back and I sometimes weed them out. Sometimes I do more research on certain things just to see if I'm on the right track.

Sometimes I look at them and I wonder, why did I screenshot that? That makes no sense. But I have a number of things, enough for at least three episodes probably from just the past two weeks. And I haven't been able to talk about all of them just because I've been busy working on my house.

Many of you know, if you listen to the podcast regularly, I have a lot of renovation and repair work that needs to be done. I basically have a fixer upper and been doing some of that. And it's like, I spent like a day and a half.

Well, no, I spent about a full day. We'll put it that way. Putting up like four lights. Now, it should take under half an hour to put up a light. Even with some of these lights, it should have taken even less than that, except for the fact that I live in an old house and the insulation and the wiring.

And so it's not only is it confusing, but it's like from like at least 50 years ago, some of this stuff. And I'm working with it, trying to figure out, let's just say I saw some sparks and I'm glad that they're installed now.

Finally figured it all out. But thank goodness that there's videos out there on old houses and how to approach some of those things. I also had some help from a friend of mine. I called him up, he's an electrician.

And I was just like, I don't understand what's going on. But anyway, so that's one of the things that I've been working on. But I've also just been involved with a bunch of stuff. So I went to, I think these are interesting things.

So I went to a culinary graduation, Culinary Institute of America, the premier cooking school in the entire world, cooking, baking food. And it's in my backyard. I'm involved with some ministry related stuff there at times.

And one of the guys that I was discipling ended up graduating. And so I got to go and I've never been to a culinary graduation. And my understanding is the Culinary Institute has a semi-Christian, there's something underlying it.

There's something in the way distant recesses of the memory that was connected to Christianity. I'm not sure exactly what. I know there's a Catholic chapel on campus. But when I went to this graduation ceremony, it was interesting to me because you could tell what was archaic and then what was new, religiously.

You could tell the archaic elements of older ways of reverence and piety, and then newer ways of reverence and piety that are really fake cheap substitutes for it. So let me give you an example here. And I would assume this is probably across the board.

This probably isn't unique to the culinary, but they had an invocation. And I think it was the president of the school they had there. And so she gave an invocation and she asked everyone to bow their heads.

So I thought, oh, wow, this is pretty cool that we're gonna have a prayer. But then it wasn't really a prayer. It never mentioned God, not even in a vague sense. It was just, we're thankful, but thankful to who?

I don't know. We're thankful for each other. It was very temporal things that she referenced, being thankful for. Of course, I mean, I guess ourselves were eternal beings, but it was not, there was nothing transcended about the prayer.

And it was over in like, it was a very short prayer. It was like 10 seconds. I mean, 15, I don't know. That's what it felt at least. It was very short and totally secular. And I'm like thinking in my head, I'm like, oh, that's what a secular prayer feels like, I guess, where there's no hint that a creator might actually exist.

There's no one to be thankful to. We're just really thankful that we get to graduate and have the abilities we have and most of all for each other. So, okay, relationships, got it. Thought, well, it's, you know, has Christian background in the distant past, but perhaps, but it's not present now.

That's to be expected, right? And then they do the National Anthem, which I thought, wow, that's interesting. I wasn't quite expecting that, especially for a secular college experience. For some reason, I just didn't think that that was something that was still done as much.

Well, they did it. And they had on a screen behind all the speakers and those who were being honored on the stage in the front, they had a big waving American flag just displayed on the screen. And then they sang or they played the National Anthem.

Well, no one, hardly anyone was, it was a whisper of a sing. You know, you wouldn't have been able to make out the words. It was just very hushed. And most of the people probably weren't even doing much of anything.

And you look at the people on stage, you could tell most of them were trying to like very limply mouth the words. I think one person was singing. And then their main speaker wasn't doing a thing except putting his hand over his heart.

That was it, you know, mouth shut. So it just, it felt weird. It felt almost dystopian. Like no one believes this or no one knows about this. We did not feel a connection. Let's put it that way in the room, which is one of the reasons you do those civic rituals is because that's the thing that binds you together.

That's the glue. That's how you build trust among fellow Americans, especially in a place as diverse culturally, ethnically, linguistically, all the rest of it as the United States. That's, you gotta have some things you share in common.

Well, it's clear to me that, especially the younger generation, this is not something that they revere. So those two things happened. And then something weird happened, something unusual happened. Now it's not that weird, I guess, in 2022, but it struck me as odd because I realized as it was happening, I thought this is the substitute.

This is the religious substitute. This is what we just went through were the hoops that needed to be jumped through. They were the little check marks that needed to be crossed off because they've always done it this way.

And so you don't wanna ruffle the feathers of maybe some older folks, and this is just the way it is. So let's just get through it. We don't care about it, but let's get through it. And now let's get down to really what we're about.

And that was, to put it in one word, diversity. Now, it was interesting to me though. And this is why I had the thought I did because it was their president, I believe. And it wasn't just the president.

It was like every, just almost every speaker that got up there had to talk about diversity. Like it made up a lot of what they talked about for most of them. But the president gets up there and she says, she talks about the commitment that the Culinary Institute has to diversity.

And I'm used to hearing that. We're all used to hearing that. But what she said that struck me, that was interesting, that kind of clued me into, okay, this is the substitute religion, is not just how much she referenced diversity, because she did reference it a lot.

She kept having to reference it, but how she paid, she swore an allegiance to it, that we're grateful for it. I'm trying to remember the exact words she used, but I remember what I thought when she was saying these things.

We have to, it's a necessary thing for us here. And for all the speakers that come after me, they need to kiss the hand. They need to pay some homage to this and not as something that's tangible. So in other words, we're not thankful for our diverse students necessarily.

I'm not saying that they aren't necessarily, but that's not what's communicated. It's not, we're so thankful for each other and glad you got to be here from distant places. They had people stand up, recognize where they came from, if they came from other countries.

But it wasn't, the emphasis wasn't on, look at the vast array of different people here. Isn't it good that these people had the privilege and opportunity to come to the culinary? We're so glad that we got to serve you here.

We're so glad that we got to have, form relationships with you here and make you part of what we're doing. That would have been like diversity talk from perhaps 10 to 20 years ago. That's kind of what you would have heard more.

It was more tangible. Now it's all abstract. It's, we are committed to, our core principle is diversity as just this abstraction. As this concept that we all must honor and swear allegiance to and pay fealty to.

And so each speaker that came up after the president, and the president went on for, that was one of the main things she talked about. I mean, it totally, compared to the invocation, I mean, this was more important.

I mean, you would have thought that the Culinary Institute, yeah, it's got something to do with food, but what it's really about is diversity, is that concept of diversity, that that's ingrained in their culture there, that they need to all swear allegiance to it in order to be actually part of the institution.

So this is the glue. This is the commonality that now people share. It's not a commonality, and this is important and key. It's not a commonality of sharing friends with one another. You have these friends, I have these friends, we're all friends.

It's not the commonality of appreciating things about other cultures. I really like this cuisine, okay? It's not, that's not what the glue is. The glue is we all have a commitment, we place as a priority the concept or abstract principle of diversity itself.

That's what it is. So it's not a tangible thing, it's a distant abstract thing. And you need to kiss the hand and then move on. It's the necessary thing. It's a requirement. If you're gonna be part of an institution like that and rise to any level of prominence, you have to show that I'm on the same page here.

I'm with you guys. I honor the commitments of the school here. And yes, diversity is important to me as well. And isn't it important to all of us? And let's all bow down to the God of diversity. Now, I think because we're so saturated in this language, it's easy to let that kind of go right under the radar.

We don't really see it when we see it. But next time, pay attention. When you hear equity, diversity, equality, all of those things, when you hear those concepts, think to yourself, are they talking about real tangible people?

Or are they talking about a concept? In other words, could someone check off the box and show that they are committed to diversity without ever having to really appreciate or interact with anything diverse?

In other words, you don't have any friends from a different cultural background. You don't actually appreciate those cuisines necessarily. It's not, that doesn't mark you. That's not what you're all about.

But boy, are you committed to diversity? That's the difference I'm talking about. Well, how? Like, how are you committed? Like, what does that mean? Because you're committed to a concept of it. You're committed to the principle of it, the idea of it.

And then that becomes, I think, a basis for the new religion, the social justice religion, which is what I wrote about in Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, which we'll talk about more today.

So little things like that stick out to me. You look at the time that's devoted to that versus the time devoted to civic ritual, religious ritual. It doesn't even compare. There's no contest. And you even have the head of the, I don't remember what the title was, but the student body president's equivalent come up.

And that's what she talked about. So it's present in the student body. It's present in the faculty. It's present in the administration. And I think that's probably something that's across the board. And if you're paying attention, you'll see it.

County Fair Evangelism and the Changing Culture of the Zoomers

So I got to do that. And then I'll show you this picture. I got to go to a ministry. Well, this happens once a year. And I wish I could have done more of it. It kind of saddened me that I only got to go one day.

But we have an evangelism booth at the local county fair. And you can see in the background, if you're watching, are you a good person? Take the test. And here's one of the individuals who leads this effort, ministering, sharing the gospel with some high schoolers at the fair.

And so I got to go and boy, I noticed some differences. Because the last time I went to this event was probably at least five, probably six years ago. I mean, it was before I moved. And I've come back to the same area.

So I was in North Carolina and Virginia. And the churches, I was there, I didn't do anything like this. And the culture is different down there anyway. So I come back and there's so many things that have changed in this area.

But this is one of the things that I noticed at this fair. Number one, it is more urbanized. It is less, the way that people dress, the thing. I mean, it's still a county fair, but it is the whole agriculture.

I mean, and they had animals. And so there were some animals, but I don't know. I can't put my finger on all of it. But people aren't, they're not wearing boots and jeans. And it was hot out, but they're not, you don't see the hats.

You don't see a lot of it as much like I used to. I couldn't put my finger on just the atmosphere, but it was different. Something was different about it. And urban was one of the things that I thought of.

But the other thing that really stood out to me is, so the way it works is people come, they see the good person test. And if they take the test, we give them a free cold water. And it was hot, so people want that.

And everything's an arm and a leg if you wanna pay for something there. So people come into this booth and then you sit there and you give them the good person test. I usually just say, it's two questions.

One, how many of the 10 commandments can you name? And then have you kept them? And most people have heard of the 10 commandments still. There were a number though, who didn't know what I was talking about.

I mean, one of them quoted for me, the first amendment. It did not verbatim, but it was just like, and they even got the amendment wrong. They were like, well, doesn't the first amendment, I think she said, no, freedom of speech.

She goes, freedom of speech. And she goes, the fifth amendment, freedom of speech. I was like, well, it's not the fifth amendment. And that's not the one of the 10 commandments. I mean, the level of ignorance with some people is it just shows you how post-Christian it is.

But most people had heard of it at least. I don't think I had more than two people of the probably 30 people I talked to, perhaps, that could name more than four. And I was helping with a lot of it. I was giving them hints.

So then after that, have you kept the 10 commandments? And I'll go through a list and show them, here's the 10 commandments, have you kept them? And most of the people, surprisingly, are appreciative.

It's a very positive response. I had though some, especially with younger people, I noticed generation, the Zoomers, I guess, they, I mean, I was getting into things. It's so different. So here's, let me compare it here.

So like six years ago, especially with millennials, there's more, there's a suspicion about religion, okay? There's a lot more hardened atheist types. The Zoomers don't seem as suspicious about religion.

I think I had like one atheist and her friends were ignoring her. They are open to spiritual things, but I think they would have been just as open if we were a witchcraft booth. In other words, they're more than, they believe more.

I think they're open, at least, to the idea that there's supernatural entities. Many of them are into drugs. One guy told me how, you know, shrooms were the way to access the divine, and that's what he does.

And even the way he dressed with skeletons and all kinds of symbols on him. I mean, and he didn't, people don't think that's an odd thing. That's more common. I had two young girls who had, it was broke my heart, had attempted suicide, and they just started opening up.

One of them started crying. And you could just, there's an openness with the Zoomers that I didn't see with the closed off millennials as much. So there's an opportunity there. Now, how much of it gets through, I don't know.

Most people are appreciative. There are a few people who are not listening or nasty, but it was mostly people who were appreciative. And one of the things that Zoomers ask a lot is about homosexuality and transgenderism.

They wanna know what the Bible says about that. And that's how a lot of the times they evaluate. And so it's interesting to see that shift. But it was a blessing, and that's maybe an idea that your church can do, check out your local fair or wherever you could put a booth like that up.

And the cool thing is you get people coming to you. So you're not trying to go out there as good as that is, and I think it's appropriate and you should do that, but you're not going out there and trying to witness to as many people as possible.

You're getting people who are already kind of semi-open to a discussion. And hopefully those are the people that the Lord is working on their hearts. But you need multiple approaches. This is just one of them.

And I tend to like it because you tend to have more productive conversations this way, it's not a shouting match generally. So anyway, that was one of the other things. Anyway, the other thing on a personal note here, I'm almost 20 minutes in, so I better wrap this up and we better get to the podcast.

But so I've been looking for, I just figured I'd share this personal note, totally personal. I've been looking for a good road bike because I've gotten into cycling a little bit more and I can't run as much.

I hurt myself a few years ago. And anyway, cycling's a lot easier for me to do. And so I've been looking and man, bikes are expensive. And so anyway, yesterday, so I've spent like a lot of time just looking.

Every day I'll go and see like, okay, what's Craigslist saying? What's Facebook marketplace? Is anyone selling anything for a good price? So I saw this one that was like an hour and 45 minutes away from me.

And so I'm like, all right, I don't wanna drive this, but it's the best deal. So I confirmed, you know, it's Facebook marketplace. I went, drove an hour and 45 and I go through this small town that I haven't been through in a long time and I missed it.

I totally missed it. There was apparently a speed limit change. It went from like 55 to 35 and I just didn't see it. And I don't even know how long, it must've been really short. And so I get pulled over and the officer gives me a ticket.

And I was like, oh man, you know, I haven't, this hasn't happened to me in a while. I used to drive for a living. And so I would go through those towns, the small towns and I sort of got used to it because I had been pulled over on more than one occasion for, you know, you're going like really fast and all of a sudden it dips down like by 20 miles an hour or more almost immediately.

And of course there's a police officer sitting there. And it's funny, in Virginia, North Carolina, I did not see that as much. For the reputation, a lot of, especially New Yorkers think of the South, that there's, you know, corrupt cops and stuff.

And there probably are in some places. I mean, every profession has its corruption, but I've seen a lot more speed traps and things like that in New York. So anyway, I live in a state that's gotten rid of bail and it's, you know, crime is not good right now.

There's a lot of problems, but the revenue needs to be collected. And so I get pulled over and I was like, oh man, I mean, so I'm gonna have to go to court over that. And then I drive all the way out there and I get there and the owner goes, I walk, you know, actually he's pulling out and I said, hey, I'm here for the bike.

I, you know, and I had confirmed everything, messaged the guy when I was leaving, told him the distance I was coming from. He goes, oh, actually I just sold it. I was like standing there like, you what?

It's like, I just sold it. So all that to say, here's the lesson from this, free advice. If you're gonna go on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, make sure it's local. I've, it was a, it was a beautiful drive though through farmland and stuff.

But man, after I came back, I was like, what was that? Everything that I'm trying to do, I was like, what was that? So, but the Lord, I guess knew I needed a break. So I got to see some beautiful scenery and I'll, I'm still keeping my eye out for a good bike, a good road bike.

If anyone knows where I can get a good road bike, leave me a message in the comments. I mean, this is, I've never done this before where I've been so adamant about finding something. Usually I don't have this where I'm doing my research every day and I wanna find, but for some reason this has captivated me.

I'm like, I really want a good road bike. Probably because I went cycling with my brother and I realized I had a mountain bike, right? And I was like, oh, you know, I'll be fine. Yeah, no, it's a world of difference, especially when he had a carbon frame road bike and I'm trying to keep up with a steel frame mountain bike.

Yeah, it's, yeah, not, not a, and when you're going like 70 miles or some or more, it's like, you know, you need the road bike. So anyways, a little personal stuff. Some of you like that, some of you don't, but I figured I'd pepper it in there.

Let's get to the podcast today. Oh, one final thing, retreat. There's a men's retreat coming up. I know I've talked about it. Not gonna belabor the point, but please go to the link in the info section.

Would love to have you there. Russell Fuller is speaking. It's a great price. I'll be there, intimate, because we can only have as many as 100 people, that's it. And I don't even know if we'll get that many, we'll see.

But I mean, if you wanna spend some quality time, if you want your church to come and get a bunch of guys in your church, I mean, this is kind of an opportunity. I don't think, generally, to spend a weekend, especially in the woods, doing stuff that's manly stuff, with Russell Fuller, AD's gonna be there, I'm gonna be there.

I mean, this is kinda, doesn't happen much. That's October 30th, that weekend, October 28th through 30th. So anyway, check that out, link in the info section. And people have asked, how do I pay? It's old school.

You send a check-in. I gave the address at the link. But you can confirm that you're coming also at that link. All right, let's get into the podcast now. And we're gonna talk about a few things today.

Federal Power, the Trump Raid, and the Brian Auten Story

I wanna talk about, I wanna just mention this. People asked, I asked people, what should I talk about in the podcast? And some people said, you gotta talk about this raid on, well, some are calling a raid on Donald Trump's house.

And I did, I think I mentioned it in the last podcast because it was ongoing, or it had just happened. And I just wanna highlight one tweet. I like this tweet. Representative Anthony Sabatini in Florida.

Representative Anthony Sabatini says this. It's time for us in the Florida legislature to call an emergency legislative session and amend our laws regarding federal agencies. Excuse me, federal agencies.

Sever all ties with DOJ, Department of Justice, immediately. Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our state should be arrested upon sight. Now, why do you like this, John?

Well, this is a state, and Florida's been one of the best states, at least attempting to do this kind of thing, to defend their people against the encroachments of a tyrannical national or general government.

Representative Anthony Sabatini is actually advocating a form of interposition here, with which I believe would lead to a form of nullification here. That the authority of the federal authority, the federal judge, the FBI, that that actually needs to be under the purview of Florida, the Florida state government.

And that they need to amend their laws regarding these federal agencies because of what's happened. I think this is, if there's traction here, if this can go further, I'd say good, because it needs to.

It is, federal agencies have way too much power. And frankly, think about this, all the federal agencies that are weaponized now, even, I mean, you have now all the IRS agents that are hired, the IRS, but you have the, even, you know, there's a militarized, EPA has a militarized function.

Guys with, you know, snipers and stuff, if they need them. I mean, it's crazy to me how militarized some of these agencies are. But you have the FBI, you have the CIA, Department of Justice, and all the various other things under the Department of Justice.

This isn't a police force, this isn't military, these are intelligence agencies. You know, Homeland Security, you have anti-terrorists, you have all these different agencies. Accountable to whom? Supposedly to us, but it doesn't feel that way, does it?

It's because there's a human scale problem here. You have, and there's too many of them, it's just, you have too many unelected officials that are actually the ones implementing, responsible for implementing policy, which means personnel as policy, they're basically the ones dictating policy, practically speaking.

I think these, a lot of these agencies have to be shut down, they have to be gutted, many of them aren't necessary, or they need to be put under the oversight of the military, or something like that. It's kind of crazy how corrupt and how convoluted and confusing and tangled up these agencies have become.

And I think this is the solution. If you want a solution moving forward, this is it. States have to start, so you wanna come into our state, and you want to go raid the former president's house or something like that, you wanna, we need to see this warrant, and we'll arrest you.

If this is illegal, or if you're just, if this doesn't pass the sniff test, you're arrested. And there was a time, states used to be a little more like this, but that was more before the Civil War, I mean, things have changed fundamentally since that time, and really, I mean, the whole history of our republic, this has been an ever-increasing march toward totalitarianism and the consolidation of power in Washington, and that's the real slavery that we actually have before us right now, it's civil slavery, that's the ever-growing authority, authority, power of a centralized authority over us, the general government, and the more and more these other institutions like state governments, local governments, even civic organizations, voluntary associations, the less power they have and influence, and so the bigger the centralized authority gets, the less safe the individual is.

So think local, act local, and let's put some teeth in some of these state laws and give authority to some of these state police forces to do something about this kind of thing. It's just, there's so many issues like this, though, I was thinking even about the immigration issue, and just, it's like, you live in a state, and the purpose of government, to protect its people, to punish evildoers, but why, to protect your people.

So when, obviously there's limitations to this, but when, borders is pretty basic, boundaries around your land, so we know who's coming in, we know who's going out, at least we know who's coming in, and we can, we can protect our people from potential terrorists, criminals, all of that.

Government, the federal government, or the general government's not doing its job in this area, so what's a state like Texas supposed to do? This is a real problem, because now there's a failure at the level at which there should be some protection.

Well, someone's gotta, interposition, someone's gotta step in and fulfill the role here, and so there's just a lot of issues I think this could apply to, but anyway, so that's my discussion of it, I don't know the ins and outs of what exactly happened and why it happened, there's all sorts of things I've heard, are they planting evidence, are they, was this something related to January 6th, to find out if Donald Trump had written down a note that they could get him on, is this a threat to him, is this, what exactly is it, I don't exactly know, and so I'm not gonna comment on that, but it's never happened before, and it certainly looks suspicious.

Let's talk about this, and then we're gonna get to the natural affections and rightly ordered desires and all of that, because I wanna talk about that for a little bit, but Paul Sperry here, and I don't know who that is, but FBI supervisory analyst who rubber stamped the 2016 dossier without vetting and wrote the 2020 disinformation assessment derailing Hunter Biden investigation is a leader in a DC area church that was investigated for covering up child sex abuse, including child rape and molestation.

So I looked, I tried to go back to find the tweet, Paul Sperry's account has been deleted, along with, by the way, a lot of other people, so it's Twitter, but I figured out, this was about Brian Auten, and there's a story that just came out on the 27th of July in Newsmax, it says this, FBI analyst Brian Auten, who labeled negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation in 2020, shutting down a probe into Hunter's financial and foreign business activities was referred for disciplinary action months before doing so, according to the whistleblowers.

So Brian Auten's not, he's not doing too well. There's some whistleblowers coming out and saying that there was disciplinary action against him during the Trump administration. Well, so this is what he has done.

He not only was he part, and I've talked about this before, how he ran interference and basically was, played a pivotal role in the whole collusion, the Russia collusion hoax, remember that? Brian Auten was one of the ones that was treating that all as legitimate.

And then he did, but he's a political operative, it seems like, Hunter Biden's financial indiscretions, all of that, he was the one that put an end to that probe. So Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican Iowa, earlier this week in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray said whistleblowers were claiming that the FBI had attempted to downplay or discredit potentially damaging information regarding Hunter Biden, you think?

If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are, and have been, institutionally corrupted to their very core, to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people have no confidence in the equal application of the law, Grassley wrote in the letter.

Auten, a supervisory intelligence agent, was involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, including interviewing Igor Denchenko, reportedly the main source for British ex-spy Christopher Steers' dossier in 2017.

He was referred for disciplinary action to the Office of Professional Responsibility following the publication of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December 2019 report on the Trump-Russia investigation.

So this is just, this is just terrible. And John, why are you telling me all about this? Well, because of this. I've talked about Brian Auten on the podcast before. 2019, Brian Auten, and this is a thread, part of a Twitter thread from a guy named Stephen McIntyre.

In 2019, Brian Auten wrote an article proposing counterinsurgency against the evangelical dark web. You know who they were? Enemies within the church. That that, Capstone Report. I mean, those are the people that he's talking about there.

And I went through the whole article. I showed that this was actually a self-refutation in some ways, because what he was recommending, the burden of proof that he wanted to meet in order to get all these quote-unquote discernment, quote-unquote ministries to meet in order to prove their legitimacy, he wasn't meeting himself.

Anyway, that, it was from, at the time, 2019, I remember thinking like, this is someone who's an intelligence agent with the United States government who's now dipping his toe into the social justice fight and evangelicalism.

Why would he do this? Well, he was a professor at Patrick Henry College. And so anyway, the church is, it looks like it was Sovereign Grace, CJ Mahaney. It was all that. Here's the thing though. So he's a member there.

But here's the thing that I thought was interesting in this thread, and I haven't done a deep dive, but Steven McIntyre says, "'In August 2020, while Brian Auten had the important task of establishing the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop, Auten was studying the color of compromise to lead a seminar at Redeeming Grace Church in Fairfax, personally attending to the RSVPs.'".

Yeah. So I'm just thinking that is an interesting connection there. You got someone who is directly responsible for some of these national outrages, the compromise of the intelligence agency. I mean, if any of this is true, he would be the poster child for it, stopping the Hunter Biden investigation, but also promoting a kind of a, frankly, a stupid investigation into a collusion between supposedly Russia and Donald Trump's campaign.

And this is what he's leading at his church. He's leading a study on the color of compromise. Find it interesting. What side of the social justice war is he on? And what side of the political fight is he on?

And then what are his tactics? It's just interesting to me that that overlap exists. Because often you hear the objection like, well, just because I'm for compassion or I'm for racial reconciliation or whatever, I'm against abuse or whatever, doesn't mean I'm a Democrat.

It doesn't mean, and it's like, well, I guess that's possible. You could be, sure, you could be voting Republican and you could be moving left in an evangelical, according to an evangelical metric. But it's like when Tim Keller was, when we found out he was a registered Democrat, Mark Devere was a registered Democrat, you'd start thinking, Russell Moore wanted to marry someone like Hillary Clinton.

He talks about this on his blog and it's just how many of these people are Democrats? I wonder sometimes. And so here's just an example of someone who's pushing the needle left in the political sphere as well.

The Holy Post, Kaitlin Schiess, and the Idea That There Are No Other People's Children

Now, let's get to the main issue here. I wanna talk about this clip and then I'm gonna talk about an article by Doug Wilson. Now, I need to say about Doug Wilson, I know there's, some of you would probably love for me to weigh in on other things that Doug Wilson has said in the past, and that's not for this episode and it's not that those things aren't important, but for this episode, I have a narrow focus.