Rightly Ordered Affections

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. It has been an interesting past week for me for many reasons.

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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.

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I just spent a few hours this morning just looking over some of the things I've screenshotted. That's how

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I often do things now. I just screenshot it on my phone and whether it's a conversation or a new story

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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.

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That's something we can talk about for whatever reason. And then I go back and I sometimes weed them out.

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Sometimes I do more research on certain things just to see if I'm on the right track.

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Sometimes I look at them and I wonder, why did I screenshot that? That makes no sense.

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But I have a number of things, enough for at least three episodes probably from just the past two weeks.

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And I haven't been able to talk about all of them just because I've been busy working on my house.

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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.

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I basically have a fixer upper and been doing some of that. And it's like, I spent like a day and a half.

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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.

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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.

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And so it's not only is it confusing, but it's like from like at least 50 years ago, some of this stuff.

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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.

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I 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.

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I also had some help from a friend of mine. I called him up, who's an electrician. And I was just like, I don't understand what's going on.

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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.

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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.

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And it's in my backyard. I'm involved with some ministry related stuff there at times.

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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.

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And my understanding is the Culinary Institute has a semi -Christian, there's something underlying it.

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There's something in the way distant recesses of the memory that was connected to Christianity.

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I'm not sure exactly what, I know there's a Catholic chapel on campus. But when

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I went to this graduation ceremony, it was interesting to me because you could tell what was archaic and then what was new, in a sense, religiously.

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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.

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So let me give you an example here. And I would assume this is probably across the board.

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This probably isn't unique to the culinary, but they had an invocation, okay? And I think it was the president of the school they had there.

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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.

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But then it wasn't really a prayer. It never mentioned God, not even in a vague sense.

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It was just, we're thankful, but thankful to who? I don't know. We're thankful for each other.

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It was very temporal things that she referenced, being thankful for. Of course,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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That's to be expected, right? And then they do the national anthem, which I thought, wow, that's interesting.

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I wasn't quite expecting that, especially for a secular college experience. For some reason,

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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

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American flag just displayed on the screen. And then they sang or they played the national anthem.

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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.

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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.

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I think one person was singing. And then their main speaker wasn't doing a thing except putting his hand over his heart.

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That was it, you know, mouth shut. So it just, it felt weird.

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It felt almost dystopian. Like no one believes this or no one knows about this.

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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.

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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

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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.

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So those two things happened. And then something weird happened. Something unusual happened.

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Now it's not that weird, I guess, in 2022, but it struck me as odd because I realized as it was happening,

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I thought this is the substitute. This is the religious substitute.

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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.

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And so you don't wanna ruffle the feathers of maybe some older folks and this is just the way it is.

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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.

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And that was, to put it in one word, diversity. Now, it was interesting to me though.

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And this is why I had the thought I did because it was their president, I believe.

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And it wasn't just the president. It was like every, just almost every speaker that got up there had to talk about diversity.

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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

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Culinary Institute has to diversity. And I'm used to hearing that.

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We're all used to hearing that. But what she said that struck me, but 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.

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She kept having to reference it. But how she paid, she swore an allegiance to it.

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That we're grateful for it. I'm trying to remember the exact words she used, but I remember what

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I thought when she was saying these things. We have to, it's a necessary thing for us here.

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And for all the speakers that come after me, they need to kiss the hand.

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They need to pay some homage to this and not as something that's tangible.

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So in other words, we're not thankful for our diverse students necessarily.

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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.

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They had people stand up, recognize where they came from. They came from other countries.

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But it wasn't, the emphasis wasn't on, look at the vast array of different people here.

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Isn't it good that these people had the privilege and opportunity to come to the culinary?

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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.

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That would have been like diversity talk from perhaps 10 to 20 years ago.

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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, we are, 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.

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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.

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I mean, it totally, compared to the invocation, I mean, this was more important. I mean, you would have thought that the

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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.

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So this is the glue. This is the commonality that now people share.

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It's not a commonality, and this is important and key. It's not a commonality of sharing friends with one another.

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You have these friends, I have these friends, we're all friends. It's not the commonality of appreciating things about other cultures.

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I really like this cuisine, okay? It's not, that's not what the glue is.

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If the glue is, we all have a commitment, we place as a priority the concept or abstract principle of diversity itself.

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That's what it is. So it's not a tangible thing, it's a distant, abstract thing.

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And you need to kiss the hand and then move on. It's the necessary thing.

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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.

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I'm with you guys. I honor the commitments of the school here. And yes, diversity is important to me as well.

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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.

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We don't really see it when we see it. But next time, pay attention.

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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?

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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?

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In other words, you don't have any friends from a different cultural background.

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You don't actually appreciate those cuisines necessarily.

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That doesn't mark you. That's not what you're all about. But boy, are you committed to diversity? That's the difference

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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.

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You're committed to the principle of it, the idea of it. And then that becomes,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And I think that's probably something that's across the board. And if you're paying attention, you'll see it. So I got to do that.

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And then I'll show you this picture. I got to go to a ministry.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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I was there at there 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.

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But this is one of the things that I noticed at this fair. Number one, it is more urbanized.

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It is less, the way that people dress, I mean, it's still a county fair, but it is the whole agriculture.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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, that's not the fifth amendment.

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And that's not one of the 10 commandments. I mean, the level of ignorance with some people is it just shows you how post -Christian it is.

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But most people had heard of it, at least. I don't think I had more than two people of the probably 30 people

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I talked to perhaps that could name more than four. And I was helping with a lot of it.

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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?

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And most of the people, surprisingly, are appreciative. It's a very positive response.

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I had though some, especially with younger people, I noticed generation, the

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Zoomers, I guess, they, I mean, I was getting into things. It's so different.

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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?

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They, there's a lot more hardened atheist types. The Zoomers don't seem as suspicious about religion.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And you could, 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.

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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.

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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.

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So there's an opportunity there. Now, how much of it gets through? I don't know. Most people are appreciative.

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There are a few people who are not listening or nasty, but it was mostly people who are appreciative.

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And the one of the things the Zoomers ask a lot is about homosexuality and transgenderism.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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You're getting people who are already kind of semi -open to a discussion. And hopefully those are the people that the

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Lord is working on their hearts. But you need multiple approaches.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And so anyway, yesterday, I've spent a lot of time just looking. Every day

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I'll go and see like, okay, what's Craigslist saying? What's Facebook Marketplace? Is anyone selling anything for a good price?

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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.

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So I confirmed, 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.

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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.

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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.

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And I was like, oh man, I haven't, this hasn't happened to me in a while. I used to drive for a living.

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And so I would go through those towns, the small towns and I started, 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.

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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.

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For the reputation, a lot of, especially New Yorkers think of the South, that there's corrupt cops and stuff.

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And there probably are in some places. I mean, every profession has its corruption, but I've seen a lot more of, a lot more speed traps and things like that in New York.

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So anyway, I live in a state that's gotten rid of bail and it's, you know, crime is not good right now.

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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,

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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,

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I walk, you know, actually he's pulling out. And I said, hey, I'm here for the bike.

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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

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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.

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Free advice. If you're gonna go on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, make sure it's local.

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It was a beautiful drive though through farmland and stuff. But man, after I came back,

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I was like, what was that? Everything that I'm trying to do. I was like, what was that?

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So, but the Lord, I guess knew I needed a break. So I got to see some beautiful scenery and I'm still keeping my eye out for a good bike, a good road bike.

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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.

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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.

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I'm like, I really want a good road bike. Probably because I went cycling with my brother and I realized

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I had a mountain bike, right? And I was like, oh, 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.

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Yeah, it's, yeah, not a, and when you're going like 70 miles or more, it's like, you know, you need the road bike.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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That's it. And I don't even know if we'll get that many. We'll see. But I mean, if you want to spend some quality time, if you want your church to come and get a bunch of guys in your church,

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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.

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I'm gonna be there. I mean, this is kinda, doesn't happen much. That's October 30th, that weekend. October 28th through 30th.

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So anyway, check that out. Link in the info section. And people have asked, how do I pay? It's old school.

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You send a check in. I gave the address at the link. But you can confirm that you're coming also at that link.

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All right, let's get into the podcast now. And we're gonna talk about a few things today.

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I wanna talk about, I wanna just mention this. People asked, I asked people, what should I talk about in the podcast?

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And some people said, you gotta talk about this raid on, some are calling a raid on Donald Trump's house.

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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.

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I like this tweet. Representative Anthony Sabatini in Florida.

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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.

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Excuse me, federal agencies. Sever all ties with DOJ, Department of Justice, immediately.

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Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our state should be arrested upon sight.

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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.

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Representative Anthony Sabatini is actually advocating a form of interposition here, which

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I believe would lead to a form of nullification here. That the authority of the federal authority, the federal judge, the

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FBI, that that actually needs to be under the purview of Florida. The Florida state government.

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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,

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I'd say good, because it needs to. It is, federal agencies have way too much power.

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And frankly, think about this. All the federal agencies that are weaponized now, even, I mean, you have now the

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IRS agents that are hired. I, yeah, the IRS. But you have the, even, you know, there's a militarized,

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EPA has a militarized function. Guys with, you know, snipers and stuff if they need them.

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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

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Department of Justice. This isn't a police force. This isn't military.

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These are intelligence agencies. You have Homeland Security, you have anti -terrorists, you have all these different agencies.

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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.

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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 is policy.

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They're basically the ones dictating policy, practically speaking. I think these, a lot of these agencies have to be shut down.

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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.

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It's kind of crazy how corrupt and how convoluted and confusing and tangled up these agencies have become.

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And I think this is the solution. If you want a solution moving forward, this is it. States have to start.

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So you wanna come into our state, and you want to go raid the former president's house or something like that?

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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.

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And there was a time, states used to be a little more like this, but that was more before the

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Civil War. I mean, things have changed fundamentally since that time.

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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.

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And that's the real slavery that we actually have before us right now. It's civil slavery.

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That's the ever -growing authority, power of a centralized authority over us, the general government.

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And the more and more of these other institutions like state governments, local governments, even civic organizations, voluntary associations, the less power they have and influence.

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And so the bigger the centralized authority gets, the less safe the individual is.

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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.

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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?

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To protect your people. So when, obviously there's limitations to this, but when, borders is pretty basic, boundaries around your land.

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So we know who's coming in, we know who's going out. At least we know who's coming in. And we can protect our people from potential terrorists, criminals, all of that.

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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?

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This is a real problem. Because now there's a failure at the level at which there should be some protection.

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Well, someone's gotta, interposition, someone's gotta step in and fulfill the role here.

30:50

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.

30:59

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?

31:10

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.

31:23

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.

31:34

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

31:50

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.

31:58

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.

32:04

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.

32:19

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.

32:34

So Brian Auten is not doing too well. There's some whistleblowers coming out and saying that there was disciplinary action against him during the

32:42

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 played a pivotal role in the whole collusion, the

32:58

Russia collusion hoax. Remember that? Brian Auten was one of the ones that was treating that all as legitimate.

33:05

And then he did, but he's a political operative it seems like, Hunter Biden's financial indiscretions, all of that.

33:11

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

33:20

FBI had attempted to downplay or discredit potentially damaging information regarding Hunter Biden. You think? If these allegations are true and accurate, the

33:28

Justice Department and FBI are and have been institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the

33:34

United States Congress and the American people have no confidence in the equal application of the law Grassley wrote in the letter.

33:40

Auten, a supervisory intelligence agent was involved in the Trump -Russia investigation, including interviewing

33:45

Igor Denchenko, reportedly the main source for British ex -spy

33:50

Christopher Steere's dossier in 2017. He was referred for disciplinary action to the

33:55

Office of Professional Responsibility following the publication of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December 2019 report on the

34:02

Trump -Russia investigation. All right, so this is just terrible. And John, why are you telling me all about this?

34:10

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

34:17

Twitter thread from a guy named Stephen McIntyre. In 2019, Brian Auten wrote an article proposing counterinsurgency against the evangelical dark web.

34:26

You know who they were? Enemies within the church. That capstone report,

34:33

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.

34:58

Anyway, it was from, at the time, 2019,

35:03

I remember thinking like, this is someone who's an intelligence agent with the

35:09

United States government who's now dipping his toe into the social justice fight in evangelicalism.

35:15

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

35:24

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 Stephen McIntyre says, in August, 2020, while Brian Auten had the important task of establishing the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop,

35:40

Auten was studying the color of compromise to lead a seminar at Redeeming Grace Church in Fairfax, personally attending to the

35:49

RSVPs. Yeah, so I'm just thinking that is an interesting connection there.

35:57

You got someone who is directly responsible for some of these national outrages, the compromise of the intelligence agency.

36:06

I mean, if any of this is true, he would be the poster child for it, stopping the

36:12

Hunter Biden investigation, but also promoting a kind of a, frankly, a stupid investigation into collusion between supposedly

36:24

Russia and Donald Trump's campaign. And this is what he's leading at his church.

36:30

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?

36:40

And then what are his tactics? Just, 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,

36:54

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.

37:00

You could be, sure, you could be voting Republican and you could be moving left in that, in an evangelical, according to an evangelical metric.

37:11

But I, you know, it's like when Tim Keller was, when we found out he was a registered Democrat, Mark Dever was a registered

37:17

Democrat. You'd start, you start thinking, you know, Russell Moore, you know, wanted to marry someone like Hillary Clinton.

37:24

He talks about this on his blog. And it's just, how many of these people are

37:29

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.

37:38

Now, let's get to the main, the main issue here. I wanna talk about this clip and then

37:44

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.

37:56

And it's not that those things aren't important, but for this episode, I have a narrow focus. It's one thing that I wanna talk to you about, okay?

38:04

And I just saw this on my Facebook feed. A lot of people were talking about it. I don't know if anyone else's Facebook feeds are the same way, but I thought, you know, this is a good opportunity to talk about this.

38:14

So here, I first wanna play for you a clip here. This is from, who is this from?

38:24

This is on the Holy Post podcast with Phil Vischer. And it's

38:30

Caitlin Scheiss, I believe is the name, Caitlin Scheiss. And here's what she has to say.

38:36

Now, Caitlin Scheiss has written for Sojourners, Sojourners online. That gives you an idea of kind of where she's at,

38:43

Jim Wallace's organization. She's, I mean, she's on the Holy Post podcast. So obviously on the left for an evangelical standard, certainly on the left.

38:52

So here's her. And so she says this to say about affections, about, and really it's the responsibility that we have for our own children versus the responsibility we have for other people's children.

39:14

Take a listen. I just, another thing that struck me while I was reading this article was how often the author did a wonderful job of highlighting moments when she was talking to people who were a part of creating this policy, who had to step away from speaking to her because their child needed something.

39:35

And I think the reason that it struck me especially is because I have found myself among many

39:41

Christians, probably people ideologically similar to the people Sky was describing, who would do anything for their own children.

39:51

And it's ironic. We've talked multiple times in the podcast about parents fighting for their kids to not be exposed to CRT in the classroom or like evangelical

40:00

Christians especially have this reputation of being pro -family, fighting for their kids, protecting their kids.

40:06

And it is a deeply Christian idea to think that you have an obligation beyond your immediate family.

40:13

And if we are not learning that in our churches, learning that for Christians, there's no such thing as other people's children, that you have an obligation to the hurting vulnerable children proximate to you and those who your actions, whether very abstract to you or not affect in another part of the world or another part of your country.

40:33

If we're not cultivating that on a spiritual level, if we're not teaching about that, if we're not talking about the fact that we cannot primarily protect our own family, our own interests, our own way of life, but that we should be intimately like deeply concerned with protecting children who are not our biological children or our nuclear children.

40:51

If that doesn't start in the church, it's no wonder that when it would really hurt you politically or hurt you materially to stand up for children who are being forcibly separated from their parents at the border, that you wouldn't have the resources to do it because you haven't been properly formed by the church into the kind of person who thinks of those children as your responsibility as well.

41:10

And that's the kind of small thing that if you feel helpless about this thing that has already happened, that's something to look in your own community and think, are we being formed into the kind of people who see hurting vulnerable people in our community and think there's no such thing as other people's children.

41:24

Those are my responsibility too, to care for and protect. Okay, that was Caitlin Schweiss talking about the border situation and kind of just adopting the narrative of the left that the

41:36

Trump administration just wanted to separate kids and parents. And we've talked about that before. I mean, there's a massive influx or a massive amount of people coming across the border.

41:46

We can't always verify whether the kids are actually, that those are their parents so that there has to be a separation sometimes to figure that out.

41:54

There's not enough border agents. There's a lot of problems and those problems stem back to years prior to the

42:01

Trump administration. This stuff was happening during the Obama administration and no, they're not in cages. They are in places where they're secure, but it's not like they're being fed, they're being clothed, all that, right?

42:10

But Caitlin Schweiss and the rest of them on the Holy Post kind of just buy the progressive narrative about this.

42:17

And like ideologues and progressives, they do this flatlining thing with love, okay? This is how a progressive loves.

42:24

It's kind of like what I was talking about earlier with diversity or an ideologue loves. So I don't have to know anyone diverse like from another background and be friends with them to care about diversity, right?

42:36

As long as I care about the concept of diversity, I'm good. And it's similar in this where you can like love everyone equally across the whole world.

42:44

Well, obviously you have limitations. You cannot do that. But in their conception, in their mind, yes, you can because an all powerful government can do it.

42:54

And I guess they just get resources from magic trees or something, I don't know. But if the government can do that, like the important thing is that you care about everyone else's children.

43:05

And the distinction that's under attack here is the difference between your children and other people's children, your people, other people's, their people, your region, other people's regions.

43:17

Whatever it is you pick, the things that you have in common with other people and that constitute a group or a nation or a family, those things need to be eroded, those boundaries.

43:30

That is, that's what Marxists have been doing in various forms for a long time.

43:37

And so her statement here, no such thing as other people's children. If you think about it, it's kind of dumb, okay?

43:44

Because obviously there's such a thing as other people's children. God does not hold you as accountable for those children.

43:50

Now, of course, if you're in the store and you're running around and you bump into another person's child and you hurt them and there's a responsibility there and you were negligent, okay, yes, you have a responsibility because you did something foolish.

44:04

But in and of itself, apart from your actions in the common realm, you're not feeding clothing, you're responsible for the kinds of things that you have responsibility towards your children for.

44:21

That's why if you don't feed your children, if you don't protect your family, that kind of thing, if you fail to provide for your own family, you're worse than an unbeliever.

44:32

That's why children even have responsibilities to their parents. It's a two -way street. Children, obey your parents. And the

44:37

Lord for this is right. And you will live long on the earth. These are just biblical truths. And to make sense of those biblical truths, you need this distinction.

44:44

There's your children, there's other people's children. And it's the ideologue who wants to wipe that away. No, you can just love everyone equally.

44:50

So yeah, I love the world. I can't tell you any people I love in the world, but I love them all. And I love someone in Timbuktu as same as I would someone in my own house.

44:58

Same kind of love, really? Really? Well, then you must be an evil person because you must not love them because, or else,

45:05

I mean, you got some priorities you got to figure out here because why would you have, why would you be,

45:12

I mean, because there's so much more that just even comes with love. There's the responsibilities, there's obligations. And if you feel an obligation towards someone in Timbuktu who should have people around them that would be shouldering those kinds of obligations, and you don't have the same, or you have the same level, but it's for someone in your own household, but it's no more than or no less than, it's exactly the same.

45:39

When is your capacity, say, maximized? We're full. I mean, how many people can you actually love in the same way?

45:47

You can't. I mean, you can have one wife, you can have a certain amount of kids, but then there's a human scale problem that happens.

45:52

You just don't have, you have limited time. So this is the kind of thing that can only be, it translates from a concrete reality into an abstraction where it's the government that needs to love all these people.

46:08

And as long as you assent to that idea and you're pushing for that, those programs that do that, and you're committed to the concept of equality, diversity, loving other people's children, then if you don't do those things, you must be horrible.

46:25

You're a bigot. But it all plays into this totalitarianism we're seeing. So she attacks this.

46:31

There's no such thing as other people's children. And we need to think of other people's children as our responsibility as well.

46:38

We need to think of them as our responsibility as well. This is dangerous. This is dangerous. You have limitations.

46:46

You weren't made for that. That would stress you out completely, by the way. They're your responsibility insofar as you interact with them and have dealings with them.

46:56

But not in the same way that their parents would have a responsibility for them. Not in the same way that their local area and the people there would have a responsibility for them.

47:06

So put it into this situation of the border. Whose responsibility is it when someone crosses the border illegally, whether it's their children or their smuggler using children as a front, whose responsibility are those kids?

47:23

Is it the responsibility of Americans now? How about the whole world? Is it the responsibility for Americans to feed and clothe and take care of and make sure that all the children of the entire world are cared for?

47:36

Or is it the responsibility of Americans to take care of their own children? See, these are questions that need to be asked. And you're gonna come up with limitations if you try to.

47:48

It's like the boat that's taking on too much water. If you try to expand the responsibility, the natural relationship that exists beyond to include all these other children that should have their parents.

48:04

And sometimes we live in a sin -cursed world. Sometimes parents shirk their responsibilities. It's happening more in our country too.

48:11

And so then where does the responsibility fall? Well, think of it as proximity. It's those outer levels, those outer circles.

48:17

You have extended family, you have community, you have friends, you have, who is it then?

48:23

Good Samaritan is a good example of this. I mean, it's not, you come across someone hurting on the road and that person is not related to you.

48:31

That person's different than you. But the proximity is, I came across them on the road.

48:37

So I have a responsibility to at least provide some temporary care for that person.

48:42

But it's a proximity thing, even there. So I think there's a recognition here that even with the

48:51

Trump administration and before then the Obama administration, I think there's a recognition that, all right, these children, it's not their decision generally to come across and do something illegal.

49:00

And so, yeah, we're gonna try to get to the bottom of this. We're gonna separate them. We're gonna try to verify if that's actually their parents.

49:06

We're gonna feed them. We're gonna clothe them. We're gonna, there's responsibility being taken in that.

49:13

But somehow it's not enough. And it never is, by the way, for progressives. It never is.

49:20

You have to love them more. And the real angle, the real attack here is get rid of that distinction between your children.

49:27

You love your children so much. I mean, you who crafted policies that separate kids, you love your children so much.

49:35

Why can't you love those children in the same way? Well, because you're not in the same, they're not in the same situation and they're not my kids.

49:42

My responsibility is to protect my kids. My responsibility is to fight for my country. My responsibility is to help my local community, right?

49:51

It's good to help other people, it's fine. But that's not your primary obligation.

49:57

This is a principle that has been understood, I think, the basics of it, at least.

50:03

Not that there's not warped versions of it around, but these basic distinctions have been understood pretty much forever, until recently, as far as I understand.

50:14

I mean, you read any of the church fathers, you read your reformers, you read not even just in church history, in pagan history, you go back to the

50:22

Greco -Roman, like this was just understood. The house, the oikos, the family, that was a unit to be held in sacred reverence, to be cherished and to be loved above other families.

50:38

You do it on Father's Day, world's best dad. Really, is that really the world's best dad? Did you run the study? No, it's my dad.

50:45

That's what I'm talking about. Should you just like, we should, that's wrong. There's no such thing as other people's dads.

50:52

Would anyone say that? Everyone's just dads.

50:57

And then you take the category of dad and it's just an abstraction. It's meaningless at that point. It only has real meaning.

51:05

Of course, there is a category for dad. I'm not saying there's not, but the unique thing or the important thing for you as an individual is your dad, the relationship you have.

51:17

That is a meaning that is different than the relationship you have with your friend's dad.

51:24

So I'm beating the dead horse, but that's a problem and that's how the left thinks. Now, it's in this vein that I want to talk about this

51:32

Doug Wilson kerfuffle that happened. And I wanna read for you some, just a few quotes from this.

51:41

So Thomas Accord did a great podcast on this, by the way. And I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel. Thomas Accord kept reading quote after quote from Augustine on natural affections or the rightly ordered desires and the responsibility you have towards your family, et cetera.

51:58

This is what prompted that. Doug Wilson said this in an article on June 18th for his blog.

52:05

And again, this is not meant to be, I should probably preface this. This is not meant to be like a, there's a lot of attacks on Doug Wilson for political things he said.

52:17

And probably most of them, I would say, the vast majority, I'm sure,

52:23

I would be like, yeah, that's ridiculous. I would be largely, my point is that Doug Wilson would be more on the right, okay?

52:32

That's the contrast that I'm drawing here. This was a very recent podcast on the Holy Post, August 10th and by Caitlin Schweiss and what she said, and this is

52:44

Doug Wilson. And I want you to hear or see at least the similarities, not that Doug Wilson is saying exactly the same thing, but look at this.

52:53

And I only bring it up to say that there are people on the right in Christianity who

52:58

I think are having trouble with this to some extent, or at least they're not being as clear as perhaps they could be on this particular issue.

53:09

It's a little similar to what I've talked about before with so many of the people who have written books against social justice agreeing, or critical race theory, agreeing with critical race theorists that race is just a social construct.

53:22

I pointed this out before. I'm like, well, that's kind of the postmodern assumption. That you're going along with the critical race theorists.

53:28

You're gonna write a book against critical race theory, but then you agree with that core tenant. Well, check this out.

53:34

So this is Doug Wilson and this is what he says. He says, I have far more in common with a

53:41

Nigerian Anglican woman, far more in common with a Nigerian Anglican woman who loves

53:47

Christ than I do with white conservative American men who don't. The line is vertical, always vertical. We are Christians.

53:53

All right. Now, he got some pushback for this. The line is vertical.

54:00

It's always vertical, okay? That's always where the line goes. No, I guess, variation there.

54:06

It's always vertical. And he's doing something different than Caitlin Schweitz.

54:12

Because at least, you know, Caitlin was saying that, essentially what she was saying was that we need to get rid of the distinction.

54:20

There's no such thing as other people's children, okay? Doug Wilson is saying, well, there is a difference.

54:27

It's not like we just get rid of categories. What Doug Wilson is saying is that there's really just, there's two significant categories.

54:35

So there's Christians and there's non -Christians. And the line's always vertical. So I have far more in common with a

54:40

Nigerian who loves Christ than I do a white conservative American man. So more in common with a

54:46

Nigerian Anglican woman. Now, here are the questions that he got. I think these are good questions because it's more complicated than this.

54:54

That's my point. Proximity is more complicated than this. And I think Doug Wilson knows that. But there's tension somewhere in here.

55:02

And I wanna explore that a little. What's the tension? Why was there a debate on this online? Questions, if a professing

55:09

Christian is shooting at you and an unbeliever is shooting back, where do you point your own rifle? I talked about this with Joel Webben the other day.

55:18

And hopefully some of you saw that. I did a whole podcast with Joel Webben about Jordan Peterson. And we talked about Jordan Peterson and Tim Keller.

55:24

And Jordan Peterson doesn't affirm the things Tim Keller affirms that I agree with. So shouldn't we be closer with Tim Keller?

55:30

But yet we feel more of an affinity in some ways with Jordan Peterson. Why is that? And so we teased it out for a while.

55:37

And one of the analogies I gave was I said, look, if you're on the battlefield and someone who's wearing your uniform is shooting at you and someone who's wearing a different uniform is shooting back and helping you, who are you gonna feel closer to?

55:51

Okay, so Tim Keller might be wearing the right uniform, but he's shooting at you. And Jordan Peterson might be wearing the wrong uniform, but he's not shooting at you.

55:58

And so that was one of the analogies I gave. Well, it's interesting. I didn't know about any of this when we talked about that. If a professing

56:04

Christian is shooting at you and an unbeliever is shooting back, where do you point your own rifle? It's a good question. Who do you have, in that moment, when you're on the battlefield shooting, who do you have more in common with?

56:16

Am I wrong for believing myself, a white Christian man, to have more in common with Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson than I do with Russell Moore or Tim Keller?

56:24

If a Nigerian Anglican woman came here and started advocating I have my home taken from me and given to a member of a preferred victim class because I am white, all the white professing to love

56:34

Jesus, do I have more in common with her or a non -believer that opposes her? Also, given the true

56:40

Christians are who we have the most in common with aren't clear distinctions on what a true Christian is severely lacking in our day.

56:47

Biden has a Trinitarian baptism. Do I have more in common with him than a non -Christian conservative politician?

56:55

So Doug Wilson recognizes these objections and here's what he says. To put the question bluntly again, would it be possible, and maybe this is his phrasing of it, would it be possible for two

57:05

Christian men to serve in two opposing armies and for both of them to have rightly ordered affections and for both of them to do their duty and for each of them to shoot and kill the other one in plain battle?

57:13

The answer to this one is yes. And it certainly does require more thoughtful consideration than we have given it up to this point,

57:20

I agree. It does consider some more thoughtful consideration. Because if you're gonna make the argument that way,

57:27

I have way more in common with the guy that I'm trying to kill. And he has more in common with me than the guy that's right next to me in that effort.

57:38

It doesn't jive. It's something feels off about it. And I'm gonna explain why that feels off. Here's what Doug Wilson says though.

57:45

He says, and listen to this, by faith, Rahab betrayed her homeland. Okay, well, she betrayed her homeland, but she was unwilling to compromise because there was a higher authority that she was yielded to, which was what?

58:01

God. By faith, David evaded arrest. By faith, Jeremiah resisted

58:06

Judah's war effort. By faith, Abner switched sides in the civil war. By faith, Moses walked away from his upbringing. By faith, the Philippian jailer joined a subversive religious movement.

58:15

By faith, we study our Bible, seeking to learn how to structure our jumbled affections correctly. Okay. Right now in North America, we have four kinds of church.

58:26

It's an odd way in my mind, the way he closed this. We have the Compromise Church, which is doing whatever it can to accommodate the woke commies, he's right about that.

58:36

And we've talked a lot about that. We have the Bewildered Church, which is largely a red state phenomenon, sheep scattered on the mountainside and all the shepherds

58:43

AWOL. Yep, we have that. Then we have the Reactionary Church, which correctly identifies the presenting source of the problem, the woke commies, but without identifying the underlying source of the problem, which is the sinfulness of the human heart, their own included.

58:55

And last is the Confessing Church. That is the portion of the church that has not surrendered its birthright, which is all of Christ for all of life.

59:03

I will mention in the last paragraph what you need to do if you want to become part of that Confessing Church. Okay, so what he's saying here is that there's these different kinds of churches and some are misdiagnosing this, some are rightly approaching this, and we all want to be part of this

59:22

Confessing Church. Now, I think the language here could be better. This is sloppy because it could yield the impression that a confessing

59:29

Christian or a true Christian is this, is gonna do these works. Because he says this, he goes, do you want to be part of the

59:36

Confessing Church, love Christ, bless your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, read your Bible, confess your sins, act and not react, gather your wife and children close, find a church that stayed open, learn to sing psalms, vote the bums out, get your kids out of government schools, stop making excuses, love your enemies, and here's a hot one, pray for Russell Moore.

59:52

I love all of that, that's all great. Of course, the definitions are important. I don't think what he's saying is to be a

01:00:00

Christian you need to do these things, to be part of the narrow definition he's ascribed to Confessing Church. Confessing Church, though, has applied to other things.

01:00:08

It usually means you have a confession. So that's why I find this kind of sloppy. I think the overall point, though, that he's trying to make here is that there's, he seems to imply that there are reactionaries that have latched onto his statement and have perhaps misused it, misunderstood it, or just part of the reactionary church,

01:00:34

I guess. And we need to strive for something higher and better, and praying for Russell Moore would be part of that.

01:00:40

We need to, we can't always be in the attack mode, I guess. I'm even having trouble deciphering some of this myself.

01:00:48

But that's where he lands the plane. That's what he thinks the solution to this is. And if you're wondering what

01:00:54

I'm wondering, then you're in good company. Because I'm wondering, what's the connection?

01:01:01

So the objection, the initial statement was that you have far more in common with a Nigerian Anglican woman who loves

01:01:07

Christ than I do with white conservative American men who don't. The line is vertical, always vertical. We are Christians. And the objections to that,

01:01:14

I don't know exactly what the last part of this, how it connects exactly. Other than, I guess, you will understand it better if you're part of the confessing church.

01:01:25

You need to grow in your love for other Christians if you don't understand what he was saying there,

01:01:30

I guess. Here's the critique I have, okay? With respect, this is the critique I have.

01:01:37

Of this. And again, I need to preface it. I know I've done this, but I'll one more time just say, look, there are people, myself included, who can say a lot of right things politically.

01:01:50

You can get a lot of things right and then you have a bad day. Or you're inconsistent in an area or you don't. Thank God that there's other people who can look and see even my faults here, all right?

01:02:00

So that's the posture I have going forward and looking at this. Would it not be easier just to say there are our children and there's other people's children?

01:02:12

There are Christians and there are non -Christians. There is the kingdom of God, there is the city of God, and there's the city of man.

01:02:22

There's the temporal world and there's the eternal realm. Let me read for you something that I think will help make sense of all of this and help with Doug Wilson's, in my opinion, confusing take on this.

01:02:39

And then also with the take that was just given to us by Caitlin Schweiss.

01:02:46

Let me just give this to you, if I may. This is from Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

01:02:53

And I don't think I have to turn to the page here. So it's in the last chapter. I remember that, I did write it.

01:02:59

And it's in the section where I talk about Christian nationalism. And I say this, let's see if I can find it here.

01:03:10

Loving one's own people. Loving one's own people is part of loving the creator and his creation.

01:03:18

See, do I wanna start there? Okay, yeah, let's actually start before that, if we can.

01:03:28

According to scripture, the formation of nations was God's idea. After Noah's flood, the book of Genesis teaches that God formed distinct and separate nations according to land, language, and family.

01:03:37

He also made a special covenant with the nation of Israel to whom he gave land, traditions, and inheritance, religious rituals, and civil laws.

01:03:43

The apostle Paul declared that God made every nation, including setting their time of existence and national boundaries. The Great Commission itself assumes

01:03:50

Christians are to make disciples of all nations. In the book of Revelation, the apostle John revealed that at the consummation of time, it would not be an undefined group of people devoid of cultural attachments praising

01:04:01

God before the throne, but rather a great multitude from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues.

01:04:07

As can be seen, God's sovereign purpose is for families to organically form nations over time as children are born and habits form.

01:04:14

Loving one's own people is part of loving the creator and his creation. It also reflects a recognition of God's particular plan in an individual's life and the obligations that come with it.

01:04:23

The Protestant reformer, John Calvin, in commenting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, acknowledged the truth that we ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love.

01:04:32

Yet he also stated, I do not deny that the more closely a man is linked to us, proximity, the more intimate obligation we have to assist him.

01:04:43

It is the common habit of mankind that the more closely men are bound together by the ties of kinship, of acquaintanceship, of neighborhood, the more responsibilities for one another they share.

01:04:52

This does not offend God for his providence as it were leads us to it. Today's social justice movement seeks to replace this familiar love, familiar love, not with a love for tangible people in distant places, but rather with a love for achieving an ever -increasing yet always elusive diverse society.

01:05:11

In essence, social justice thinking compels one to love an idea in their own mind camouflaged as love for others.

01:05:17

Christianity, on the other hand, actually directs love towards real people. Additionally, love is not the only quality that arranges itself according to purpose and responsibility.

01:05:26

Now, what I just read to you, there's so many more things that we could talk about.

01:05:32

I mean, there's just quote upon quote from church history. There's other scriptures we could bring into this. I think this is a common sense distinction though, that there's an eternal realm and there's a temporal realm.

01:05:44

In the eternal realm, you wanna say the city of God, I have more in common with a

01:05:51

Nigerian Anglican woman. We're both gonna be in heaven together. We're gonna have the same address, worshiping the same

01:05:57

God, loving the same God, children of the same God, part of the same family, spiritually speaking. But there's also the temporal realm.

01:06:07

There's the city of man. And there are temporal earthly realities that we live in.

01:06:13

And I'm going to have more in common with, on a temporal level, a conservative male in the

01:06:20

United States than I am a Nigerian Anglican woman. We're going to share probably similar interests.

01:06:26

That's more superficial. But we're also going to share similar values, similar culture, similar efforts that we're involved in, things that we're trying to conserve or protect.

01:06:40

There's probably a lot of things I'm not even conscious about that we'll share in common. We share a homeland in common.

01:06:47

Do you share more in common with your brother or sister? Well, I put it this way. If you're, when you were a child, put yourself back in those shoes, with your brother or sister who was not a

01:06:57

Christian, or do you share more in common with your pen pal who you met on a missions trip in Ukraine, let's say, who's not a

01:07:07

Christian? Which one do you share more in common with? You say,

01:07:12

John, that's not a fair question. You're right, it's not a fair question. You share more in common with your brother or sister in the home, and you share more in common with your pen pal in Ukraine.

01:07:22

It's just on a different level. There's a distinction. One's in the temporal realm, one's in the eternal realm. City of God, city of man.

01:07:30

Now, I don't know exactly why Doug Wilson says things like the line is always vertical.

01:07:37

It's always vertical. I don't, yeah, if we're talking about the eternal realm, sure,

01:07:44

I guess, but it's weird, it's sloppy, it comes across, at least I understand why the objections were there, because you're thinking like if someone on paper can sign the statement of faith that I have, but yet they live in a different place, have completely different cultural, political views,

01:08:03

I mean, we wouldn't be able to coexist that well together, and I can coexist perfectly fine with my conservative neighbor down the street.

01:08:11

I don't understand why this, why it's such a confusing thing, or why it needs to be said that, hey, you have more in common with that person you don't know, that you've never met, that you don't share the language with.

01:08:27

Why? I can communicate with my neighbor, right? I can have them over for dinner. We can talk about, oh yeah,

01:08:32

I went to that place too, and oh yeah, I had a similar experience there, and there's gonna be just temporal realities that you have more in common with that person, and that's appropriate, and that's fine, and it could be your own child.

01:08:43

You have, they have your genetics. I mean, you have a lot in common with them. Personality, you have a lot in common with them, but yet we're supposed to believe that you have more in common with a

01:08:52

Nigerian Anglican woman. Yes and no. Again, it's yes and no.

01:08:59

Temporal realm, eternal realm, and in the temporal realm, there are all kinds of distinctions as well, and some of those distinctions are maintained in the eternal realm.

01:09:07

I'm not exactly sure how, but if it's every tribe, tongue, and nation around the throne conserving the uniqueness, their uniqueness, then

01:09:16

I think that it's safe to say that there's something in the next life, at least the life after this, that maintains some of those things, some of the characteristics that we had in this life, but within both of those realms, which that's a huge division right there.

01:09:35

Within each of those realms, there's unique responsibilities, obligations, roles that we play. I have my children, and there's other people's children, right?

01:09:43

This is all about order, rightly ordered desires.

01:09:49

It's about divine order. How has God set up the world?

01:09:55

And we may quibble sometimes about whose responsibility is what, but the point is there are narrow, there are lanes that we run in.

01:10:02

Those things do exist. There are boundaries, and there are affections that we're supposed to have.

01:10:08

I'm supposed to have affection for my wife that I don't have for other people's wives. Is that safe to say? Or should

01:10:15

I say, well, I have, hey, think of someone married to someone who's not a

01:10:21

Christian. Honey, I have way more in common with that, that other, let's say it's a woman talking to her husband.

01:10:27

I have more in common with that other man than I do you or something. I mean, you're about to start a divorce role.

01:10:33

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have, I have more in common when it comes to my faith.

01:10:39

I have more in common when it comes to the eternal realm. I don't have more in common in the sense that I love them more, or I mean,

01:10:49

I love them differently. That's fair to say. I don't love them in the sense though, or have more in common with them in the sense that, we also share the same life.

01:10:59

And I also do nice things for that person. We really sleep in the same bed and we, no.

01:11:06

All right, so I think we all get this, but there's some, I don't know if it's modernity.

01:11:12

I don't know if it's the, some people who have that sort of a one kingdom view, if that's part of it. I know Doug Wilson's big on the one kingdom stuff, but there is a natural order and there is a divine order essentially.

01:11:27

And I think you have to assume that for the Bible to make sense of the various responsibilities it gives to husbands and wives, to children and parents, labor relationships and all the rest.

01:11:37

I hope that was helpful for some of you and maybe you can identify it more now. That was the common thread.

01:11:43

I wanted to start with that culinary story and then kind of work my way to this to just say that, there's no, there's not a flat lining love or an abstract kind of love.

01:11:55

There's tangible love. That's what we should be more about. And we should recognize when someone's promoting what seems to be more of a indistinct kind of flat lining type of love.

01:12:09

And of course all three of the culinary and Caitlin Schweiss and Doug Wilson are all, they're all saying slightly different things.

01:12:16

So I'm not saying that they're all in the same, they're all saying the exact same thing, but I think there is a common theme here.

01:12:23

The common theme is there's a natural, there is a natural order that exists and responsibilities are attached to it.

01:12:29

So I hope that was helpful for some of you. More coming later on in the week. Got a lot to talk about and looking forward to it.