Stop Keeping the Peace! - Ole AD's Final Word on the Reformed Pub

Hello there, this is A .D. Robles and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. All right, all right, well today I just wanted to let you know up front that if my eyes or my face looks a little puffy, it's the first thing in the morning and I've been thinking about this episode for the last hour or so and so I just woke up a little while ago.

You might be also thinking, you know, most of you listen on the podcast and you're thinking, well why would he tell me what he looks like? I'm listening on a podcast. Well, I'm also going to upload this video, this audio to a video on my YouTube channel.

If you didn't know about my YouTube channel, go ahead and check it out. Search A .D. Robles, A .D. R-O-B-L-E-S. Go ahead and subscribe, please. If you're a podcast listener, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I have a short-term mission to have a larger YouTube channel than Dr. Russell Moore. I am very close. I've got about 3 ,000 subscribers. He's got almost 4 ,000 subscribers. So go to YouTube, A .D. Robles.

There's a ton of great content there. I've got over 350 videos. There's hilarious videos, there's serious videos, there's things that I do some fancy editing and things like that. It's all a lot of fun.

So please go ahead and check out the YouTube channel today and consider, if you like my content, consider subscribing. A .D. R-O-B-L-E-S on YouTube. Let's jump right in. What I'm planning on doing today is I'm planning on making the case that you should stop keeping the peace.

Peace at All Costs Is Not a Christian Virtue

In the next 20 minutes, I'm hoping to convince you that one of the things that you should stop doing is keeping the peace at all costs. Now that might be a weird thing for a Christian to say, and I'm going to use a couple of examples here.

I'm primarily talking about the happening over at the Reform Pub Facebook group. Now this is a relatively unimportant thing. It's a fairly large group, but it's still just a Facebook group, right? So it's not the end of the world.

But what they did by banning any mention of Doug Wilson's name, along with other things, there's other things that are banned over there as well, as far as topics of conversation. What they did was set a precedent that a Christian should not accept.

A Christian should not be the kind of person that just wants to keep the peace at all costs. Let me explain to you what I mean. Now you might say, that's weird, Adam. That's weird because I can think of verses in the Bible that talk about how you should keep the peace.

So what kind of evil nonsense are you talking about here? Well, let me sit tight. Just bear with me for just a minute. I could come up with those verses too. There's one in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes where Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.

You want to be a child of God, correct? So then why is A .D. telling you not to be a peacemaker when Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers? You know, there's another verse as well that talks about peace from the lips of Jesus as well and it's from almost the same context.

Matthew chapter 10, only five chapters later. What does he say? It's interesting. He says, do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against his mother and a daughter in law against his mother in law and a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

I remember this pairing of verses very well. This is one of those pairings of verses that atheists love. They say, oh look, there's a contradiction. Jesus couldn't be God because he said, blessed are the peacemakers and then he said that he didn't even come to bring peace.

And so what do we do? Right? What do we do about this kind of thing? Because as a Christian, you know, we're committed to believe every verse in the Bible. We're committed to number one, assume that Jesus Christ is God.

We need to believe that that's one of our presuppositions. Jesus Christ is the Lord of glory and the Lord of glory cannot contradict himself. He cannot lie. He cannot be one thing and then he can't be not that thing.

I mean, he is who he is. I'm the great I am. You know what I mean? So we, we, we need to understand these verses. We're committed to believing them. We need to be able to understand them in a way that makes them not contradict.

And luckily, well, this is not luck. This is because God is amazing. He doesn't just leave us twisting in the wind. God never leaves you twisting in the wind with this kind of stuff. So when, when atheists bring up this kind of stuff, these, these contradictions, you know, stuff like that, don't fear it.

I used to fear that stuff, but you don't have to. He gives us a little explanation here. This is, this is actually from Paul. This is from Romans chapter 18. Again, it's talking about peace. And what does Paul say?

He says, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. If it's possible, as much as it lies in you, live peaceably with all men, the King James says. And so you see the caveat here, right?

It's not peace at all costs, rather, as long as, as, as, as if it's possible, as long as it depends on you, be at peace with all men, be a peacemaker, but not peace at all costs. Sometimes it doesn't depend on you.

Sometimes it doesn't depend on you. And you can't be peaceful in certain situations. I can think of many situations like this. And when you think about Christ himself, he came to bring a sword. And the reason he came to bring a sword is because it was not possible for him to come and be at peace with all men because he had and has real enemies on this earth.

Real enemies that want nothing more than to usurp God's authority, real enemies that want to destroy his image bearers. And he came to save the world and he came essentially to conquer his foes. He's putting all his enemies under his feet.

That's going to be a violent situation. That's not going to be peaceful. It'll be peaceful when everything is put right. When he, when the final enemy, when death is put under his feet, then it'll be peaceful.

But for right now, there's not just peace. I mean, the church of God has peace. We understand that we have peace with God and we're so grateful for it. But at the same time, if you look around and it's not just all, you know, daffodils and, and daisies and, and, and little puppies and stuff like that, that's just not the reality it is.

So there is violence as well. And there's a battle I'm going to assume. I'm not going to make the case in this, in this in this video, but I'm going to make this case soon because I talked to a lot of people that say, well, there is no culture war.

I'm just a Christian. I'm not engaged in a culture war. And I'm like, what kind of, what Bible are you reading? I mean, the Bible presents what we do here as a war all the time. There's a great verse in Psalm 144 when it's like, uh, praise the Lord or bless the Lord.

He's the one who prepares me for war, who trains my fingers for battle and things like that. And so much of what we're doing in the church, much of what we're doing in the church is preparing for battle, preparing, you know, understanding what God is like, understanding what God desires from us, but not just so that we know more about God.

Yes. It's great to know a lot more about God. That's wonderful. No, nothing wrong with that, but we do it so that we're prepared to act for the Lord. That's actually one of my favorite RJ rush duty quotes.

It's not that we go to church and pray and study so that we just have the knowledge and we can say we did our duty. No, we do it so that we know what God would do in situations and so that when we face those situations, when we're ready for that, that, uh, that battle, we're ready because we've done our prep work.

We've done our preparation. You know, this is a, this is interesting because, um, I'm going to relate. I ripped two things last week that, um, people go too far with, and it's very unmanly of them to go too far with.

And I ripped video games. It's very popular to rip video games, right? I play video games. So just, so don't hear me saying video games are bad, but we all know that you can go too far with video games, right?

And so I have video games and sports. These are two things that men go way too far with. And I made the case that it's just trying, it's an, it's an attempt at replacing the real work that you should be doing, you know, doing work in these video games because a lot of these video games are, um, they're, they're, they're like all consuming, like you build stuff and things like that.

I mentioned world of Warcraft. I used to play world of Warcraft. And world of Warcraft is cool because, because it has different things that you can do. You can play it by yourself, but it's really meant to be played with others.

And they have these big, um, levels essentially where you basically have to work together. Otherwise you can't beat it. Like there's no way for you to beat it on your own. You have to go in with a team of five or 10 or something like that.

But, but not only do you have to do that, but you have to do it with, with, with five or 10 people that have different jobs, different functions, there's, there's, um, there's things called healers, right?

That's what I used to be a healer and a healer. As you might imagine, that person's job is really not to fight the enemies, although they can fight, they have weapons, but they're focused on making sure the whole party is, is healed up because they're facing these enemies that are more powerful than they are.

And they're going to, they're going to die in the game unless the healer is doing his healing job. That's what I used to do. I used to be a healer and I'd get involved in the fight every now and then, but mostly I'm trying to avoid it so that I can use healing powers on my, on my team.

Right. There's also, uh, uh, DPS is what it's called. These are essentially the fighters. These are the guys that are just trying to do as much damage as they possibly can to the enemy so that they can win.

That's their whole job. They don't focus on anything else except damage. They just want to do damage. And then they've got these guys called tanks and these I've never, I never played as a tank cause it always seemed like too much pressure, but a tank essentially is very powerful guy.

He fights, but his whole job is really to draw as much fire to himself as possible so that the healer doesn't get hurt by the enemies he's supposed to draw as much, uh, aggression from the enemy as possible.

So he's almost like a distracting guy. He takes fire for people. He's like, he's cover fire. So that way the damage guys and the healers can do their thing. And meanwhile, he's just taking all the brunt of the attacks, right?

He's, he's, he's beefy, he's strong and he does that. And so that's, you need to really work together in the world of Warcraft and everyone has a different function, right? Everyone has a different function.

And you know, another thing that works this way is a football team. I'm a Jets fan, you know, and, and, um, I used to be really into it. I used to go way too far with, with being a Jets fan. Anyway, we have a new head coach.

His name is Adam Gase and Adam Gase is the worst. He's the worst. And it's not just because the team is losing. It's the, I mean, the team is losing because of him. He's, he's a professional excuse maker.

He, you know, like nobody, nobody likes it when someone's like, basically like, why did you lose this game? And you're given excuses. You know, you don't have the right quarterback or you don't have the right offensive line.

You don't have the right players and things like that. You, you don't see winners doing that stuff. What you see winners do, excuse me, what you see winners doing. As you see winner saying, all right, well, I don't have the right players.

So let me figure out the best position to put these not right players in a, in a situation where they can be successful. So if I don't have a great thrower, I'm not going to throw the ball a ton. Or I'm going to do gadget plays where they don't have to throw the ball as far or as accurately, things like that.

Like, like that's what a winner does, but a loser just tries to blame everyone. I don't have the right pieces. I don't have the right pieces. And you know, I see the church very much in a way, like in a way like this, where, look, these are the people, like the people that are in the church.

This is who we got. This is our army, right? This is our army. And so we need to do what we have to do with this army. We didn't, and stop wishing we had another army. Like that's what we really need to do.

And so I see the church in this way. Everyone has his own role. In fact, that's a, that's a verse that, um, that lots of people love to quote. This is first Corinthians, uh, chapter 12, I believe. Um, just as one body, just as the body is one, it has many members and all members of the body though, or many are one body.

So it is with Christ for one in the spirit. We're all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves are free. We're all made to drink of one spirit. It goes on later. The, I can't say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you on the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

And those parts of the body that we think are less honorable bestow greater honor. So this is the making the case essentially of what I was explaining with the world of Warcraft. Everyone has a different role.

They're not the same role. A healer can't be a tank. A tank can't be a healer. You know what I mean? And so, so, so the reality is that the church is in a war is in a battle and does have an army and we need to use this army and, and, and guys like this is, this is the, this is why I was up this morning early, because this is a problem I see all over the place, right?

Where, I mean, this is really how stupid it gets sometimes where basically hands are saying, you're not a hand like me. Therefore you're, you must be a capitulator. You must be part of the enemy or we have, or we have ears saying, well, you're not an ear like me.

Therefore you must be unloving. And I just, I, it just drives me up the wall. It really does. It really does. I, I see this with, with people that look like, like not everyone has to have a YouTube channel, not everyone has to be brash, not everyone has to say things like in a no quarter November kind of way, like that's not what we're looking for, but, but just because somebody is a little bit more winsome than you or doesn't maybe identify the enemies as aggressively as you does not mean they're on the other team, right?

Like, like everyone has a different role. I was, I was reading the story of David and Goliath to my son. And I, it's such an interesting story because we have the fighters, right? We've got the warrior class.

We've got like the people that are supposed to be up in the front lines doing battle, getting bloody, you know, maybe making mistakes, but, but they're, they're facing the brunt of the assault. And then we have David, right?

And he's not really part of the army, but he has a role, right? He's bringing the food to his brothers. He's doing something. And there's, and in a, in a military, you have different people doing different things.

You've got snipers, you've got people in the foxholes. You've got people in tanks, you got, you know, medics, you've got, um, intelligence officers. You've got spies, you've got like, there's all kinds of different roles in a war, right?

And obviously a spy is not going to go out into the big of the battlefield, stick out his chest and say, okay, let's go. That's a role for somebody else. That's a role for somebody else. A spy can't do that.

In fact, a spy would be breaking his would be, would be, would be, would be abandoning his post if he were to do something like that. Right. And so, so this is the thing about the Facebook thing, right?

Because I noticed that I asked the question in the group about what's banned because I knew there was other things banned. So Doug Wilson, he's too, he's, he's banned because, because, you know, he's, he's, they're trying to keep the pieces of the threads about him are too polarizing.

Vaccines, vaccines, and anti-vaccine that's banned. Marijuana, drug legalization, that's bad. Birth control and vasectomies, that's bad. The question on whether or not a woman should have children. I can't think of a more basic Christian question, but that's banned.

Medical questions are banned. Any article by pulpit and pen is deleted. And so what are, what are these people attempting to do here? Right. What, what are the admins of this group attempting to do? Well, one of the things they're attempting, there's others, a variety of things, and, and they said so in the, in the initial post, there's a variety of reasons we're banning Doug Wilson.

But what the primary one seems to be, at least what they're going with is they're trying to keep the piece. It's just too much moderation required, right? It's too much moderation required. And, and to me, that's a real tragedy because here's the thing guys, when we're fighting with each other, right?

When we're, when we're, when we're fighting with each other and we're kicking around these ideas that are controversial and things like that, like, you know, vaccines, should women have children, should women be focused on the home, like, you know, things like that, like, like these questions that are controversial, like we're in that war already and we need to train for that war guys.

We need to train for that war. So when I talk to my brother and oftentimes when I'm, when I'm going to make a controversial video, I'll call my brother and we'll kick it around a little bit, me and him.

Right. And it'll get animated sometimes. And sometimes we'll be, we'll be, you know, you know, get, get aggressive with each other, with the points and counterpoints and that, you know what that is guys?

That's practice. That's the training ground. Like you can't go into a football game without a week of practice behind you. Right. Like, like you don't send your kids out to war without teaching them and training them first.

Right. Like a military, an army practices and they spar with each other and sometimes sparks fly and sometimes blood will run, you know, not, you know, not, not mortal wounds, obviously, but, but things happen.

Right. And, and I don't see any reason why a Christian ought to stop that. We, we need to practice. I mean, it's just a Facebook group, right? So we're not going to get too upset about it, but, but a Facebook group is a good training ground.

Like we need to take advantage of that. There's a lot of members in that group. Right. And what they need to learn a lot of them is how to fight. Metaphorically speaking, how to fight, stop keeping the peace.

We need to practice with each other in a safe space where it's just us. Right. Because we're in the war, the real war with the pagans, right? We're in that real culture war, whether we want to be or not, we're in it.

We're in it. And we were bringing the gospel to bear on the culture. We're preaching that gospel, kicking down the gates of hell. And we don't expect that they're just, Satan's just going to be like, Oh, come on in guys, no, he's going to fight back.

He's going to rage. And there's a war, a real war happening right now. And you're saying, well, let's go to war without training with each other. We got to keep the peace. Keeping the peace is a worthy goal in some situations.

And in some situations, it's actually sin. There is no peace oftentimes, especially when you're in a battle, when you're in a war, if you try to keep the peace with people, you shouldn't be keeping the peace with you're in sin.

In fact, there's a, there's a, there's a great Bible verse where the prophet says you're saying peace, peace, but there is no peace. You are lying. Keeping the peace is a worthy goal in some situations and in other situations, it's really the wrong move.

I'm not saying that the reform pub is in sin for this. I'm saying that they'd been brought up in such a way where basically avoiding a fight is like the ultimate, the prime directive, let's avoid the fight, right?

This is the, this is the same teaching that I grew up with. I know about it guys. Like this is how I know about it because I grew up with this teaching, anything to avoid a fight. This is the same teaching that looks down on, on in scorn with a street preacher who's out there sounding too aggressive.

This is the same teaching that has led us to have to fight back to get people at the abortion mills. Like that used to be more commonplace. And now like apology, a church, and these guys are struggling to get guys more interested in that kind of stuff.

Like it's that same teaching, avoid a fight at all costs. Avoid a fight at all costs. This is the same teaching that is allowing critical theory, feminism, all this kind of stuff to run, run roughshod in our denominations.

And you're wondering, well, where's the guys with the backbone, right? Well, the guys with the backbone are being trained to avoid fights and to keep the peace. That's where they are. That's where they are.

I was talking to a brother the other day about a guy that, that he gave a great talk and I heard it and it was just awesome is listening to it, you know, and I started going into his stuff and he said, Hey, that guy's a coward.

And I said, what? It doesn't seem like a coward. He goes, you know, he told me why he says this. And he says, he's the kind of guy that if you're in a foxhole together, you know, you should shoot him first before you make the charge, because he's going to get you in the back.

Right. And it was, it was hilarious joke. And I thought a lot about that. I thought a lot about that. And I was thinking to myself, like, you know, that wouldn't actually be right. That wouldn't actually be right because he's on our team.

I'm not, I don't think that this person was saying this guy was an unbeliever. I don't think that's what he was saying, but he was not suited for the role that he was in. Not every military guy is suited to be in a foxhole.

Not every military person is suited to be in a pressure situation. Some guys are better snipers. Some guys are better, you know, way behind the scenes where things aren't quite as high pressure, you know, and, and, and, and they joined the fight that way.

Some guys are better, um, medics, right? I mean, that's just how it is. Some people are going to be better at that kind of thing, but, but so, so, so that's the thing, like we got to understand there's different roles for different people, just like in football, just like in world of Warcraft, there's different roles for different people and let's stop treating them and acting as if they're on the other team, let's not be the hand that says to the foot, I don't need you.

Let's not be the ear that says to the nose, I don't need you. That's not how it is. That's not how it is guys. Let's fight each other, but not betray each other. Does that make sense? Does that make sense?

And so that's one of, that's the real sad thing about this Facebook group, uh, situation with the reform pub. It's because it sends the wrong message that, that fighting and keeping the peace or I'm sorry, keeping the peace is the ultimate good and fighting is, is to be avoided, especially when it gets too heated.

I think that's, that's topsy turvy. That's upside down. That's contrary to what's true, especially in this situation. We ought to use these Facebook groups as a training ground. It's not the real fight.

The real fight is not in reform pub. The real fight is out there, but we need to be ready to fight that real fight. Last point, last point, the, the case that essentially is being made is that Doug Wilson is too polarizing.

He's too polarizing. And, um, that's, that's the big problem. That's why people can't handle, you know, you know, arguing about, about him. And, and the reality is this is a, this is a common thing. That's said a lot of the time where you have you ever heard this where the people say it's not X or Y it's somewhere in the middle, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

People love to say that stuff. Right. And it's so often not even close to being true. The truth often doesn't lie in the middle. The truth is often very polarizing. I think we understand this as Christians, but for some reason it, it doesn't make it from our brains to our hearts, right?

Like we don't act like it is the minute someone gets polarizing or says something too juicy or too spicy. We, we shriek back like, like gasp, like a woman, like we're just shocked and we want to keep the peace.

We know that kind of thing. Polarizing can be a good thing. Guys. Polarizing often is a good thing. Polarizing is often a very, very good thing. Christ was being very polarizing when he said, look, if you're not for us, you're against us, you're not for us.

Rather. So it was, uh, you're not, if you're not for me, you're against me, right? If you're not on my side, you are against me. He who is not with me is against me. It's Matthew 12. It all comes from the same book.

Isn't this interesting? Um, yeah, that's not very peaceful, right? Blessed are the peacemakers. I thought, right. But, but polarizing can be good guys. And, and, and, and this is, this'll, this'll really bake your noodle.

Maybe, I don't know. And I'm not going to go into it cause it's the episodes over, but, but not only can polarizing be good, oftentimes it is, but being moderate is often very bad being moderate, otherwise known as lukewarm can be very bad on things that you shouldn't be moderate about.

If you're moderate on it, you're in sin. I'm not talking politically. I'm talking scripturally, right? There are things that you need to be polarizing about. And that's that, that's just how we have to do it.

But we've been taught that being moderate, being, being a mild manner, just sort of a lovely kind of man is the prime directive. And that's wrong. We need to get over that. We need to rediscover how to fight.

There are different soldiers that'll fight in different ways, but everyone's got to fight. And we need to practice that fight in these spaces, like in, like in the reform pub, for example, where there's lots of people and things when someone brings up, should women have want to have children, this is a very basic Christian question, right?

What, what is a woman for right? Basic Christian question. It gets too heated. So the admins ban it. That's wrong because that question, you can't avoid the fight. The fight is going to happen. But what you're saying is let's not practice that fight in our, I don't have time to moderate it, that fight.

And I just don't see, I don't see how that could be productive in any way. I really don't. One thing I'll do before we end. If you have not already considered joining the fight, laugh, feast club. I can guarantee you.

There's one thing about the fight, laugh, feast club that you, that'll never happen is we will not avoid a fight at all costs. We will try to keep the peace, but not at all costs, because we understand necessity of fighting the necessity of fighting.

If you're looking for a safe Haven for where you can actually kick these ideas around these controversial ideas about birth control, marijuana, vaccines, we will talk about any of these things in our, in our Facebook group, fight, laugh, feast, family party.

Join it. This is not the real fight, right? That's this is in many ways, this is a, this is a training ground, but not the real fight itself. But come, come on over. We'll, we'll do that with you. We'll do that with you.

I guarantee you, Doug Wilson's name is not banned there. I guarantee it's not banned there. And all of those topics that are banned in the reform pub won't be banned here. It's still going to be moderated by the way.

So it's not going to be chaos, right? We're not going to have little, my little pony means all over the place for an entire day. But, um, we understand the value of fighting and we understand that if you're going to fight, you got to train anyway, this episode has gone long.

I'm going to end it right there. I hope you found it helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.