And we are live. Welcome to episode 31 of To the Unknown Pod, a subset of the Thank God
for Bitcoin podcast. My name is Jordan Bush. I'm the executive director of TGFB Media, which
exists to help Christians understand and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good
of people everywhere.
Hey, I'm Ashok Hawthorne, an executive director of Brilliance Labs. I'm also a dad of eight.
I'm here sitting in my transit van where we pack this thing out and love to drive around the country.
I'm Ryan Finley, father of six.
I work on entrepreneurial projects with my boys, three different projects now.
And yeah.
Matt Purvis in Hawaii and longtime pastor and business entrepreneur,
but I'll call it today business as mission, but also business as activism, and maybe even
business as politics. I don't know. Ooh, use that P word, get careful. We're going to get
people turning off the pod. All right. So we are here again, generally to talk about Bitcoin.
But the crazy thing that happens is when you start trying to talk about Bitcoin, you start
realizing that it touches all kinds of things that maybe you didn't think about initially.
So we had a conversation last week with Scott Yenner, who's a very politically involved working believer and philosopher, university professor.
We talked about the case for banning porn.
And you may be thinking, what in the world does that have to do with Bitcoin or money more broadly?
And it has everything to do with it because a lot of these things are downstream from one another.
So today we're going to get potentially controversial again.
We're going to talk about politics.
And so, again, there's been a lot of conversation in the online world about the proper relationship between Christians and politics.
Should it be there at all? Should it be completely shunned in favor of just preaching the gospel and just focusing on that and making disciples?
So, again, there's questions around this topic, lots of confusion, which makes sense given the American church's pretty overwhelming lack of political involvement, I would say, at least in a certain segment, certain segments of evangelicalism over the last few decades.
So what we want to do is we're going to kind of kick this off with a video from a pastor named Josh Howerton.
He's a really thoughtful guy, and he's been, I don't know, his online profile continues to grow.
So let's take a listen to this, and then we'll kick this off.
He'll kind of give us a jumping off point.
Literally any pastor in America knows what I'm about to say is true.
They just have not grappled with the reality and the implications of what I'm about to say.
If you want the advancement of the gospel and the growth of the church to get significantly smothered in your state, your city, here's all you got to do.
Let it go blue.
That's simply what data shows.
I'll say it like this.
Show me a map of the most progressive areas in our nation.
Then show me a map of the areas in our nation that have the fewest churches.
It's the same map.
So my point is that the advancement of generally and correctly defined political conservatism, it is a significant and powerful force for pre-evangelism because it installs a plausibility structure in the populace that leads to intuitively understanding Christianity is true, right and good.
So I would say in order to accomplish the Great Commission, we need to advocate for it at the political level.
And I know this sounds like super weird and even cringe for like my secret sensitive megachurch pastor world.
That's the world I came from and I have a lot of affinity for that world.
But actual data is showing us that when political conservatism spreads, more people become Christians.
When political progressivism spreads, less people become Christians.
There's a reason for this.
New Testament talks about laws. The book of Galatians talks about laws. It talks about the
law as a teacher. What people do not understand is that laws in a nation, they have what Christians
have historically called a didactic function. Laws do not simply legislate right and wrong.
They teach the populace what's right and wrong. Laws calibrate the consciences of a nation.
If you start swimming in the streams of truth and liberty, you're eventually going to find its
source. Conservatism in general calibrates the conscience in such a way that it pushes people
toward the God from whom the principles came. Progressivism, whether you like it or not,
this is just a fact. Progressivism is built generally upon a secular Marxist view of human
nature, economics, governance. So what progressivism does, particularly secular progressivism,
is it calibrates the consciences of people away from what is true, right, and good,
and it teaches people to call evil things good
and good things evil.
And you can do that with abortion,
with gay marriage, with trans stuff,
with redistribution of wealth, all the things,
literally all the things.
All right.
So we are, again, are going to talk about this issue
because, again, this is,
we run into this issue talking about Bitcoin very, a lot.
I run into this a lot.
We get people who we start talking about,
we start a business called Thank God for Bitcoin.
We write a book called Thank God for Bitcoin. And that sounds every bit as much, if not even more
cringe than talking about the need for political action or what it would look like to be a faithful
Christian involved in political action. Those things can sound cringe. But at the same time,
there are so many things, as we've talked about at length on this podcast, there's so many things
that are downstream of money, whatever your money is, whether it's good money, hard money,
or whether it's fiat currency, fiat money. So many things are downstream from those decisions.
And so to act like they don't matter is to ignore the world that God made and the logical
consequences that actions necessarily have. So what we want to do, we want to talk about
this issue and talk about politics. Obviously, that sounds great. And I'm sure to a lot of people,
maybe that's your first time hearing that kind of thing. Maybe that sounds great to you on the
service, but you have questions. Now, again, as great as that video was, there's other people who
maybe aren't as positive on it. So we'll look at one positive take. So Pastor, let's see here,
Pastor Rich Lusk is a pastor in the Birmingham area of Birmingham, Alabama. And so he, in the
replies to that video, said this, ironic to be posting this while wearing a Yankees hat. I guess
the camo saves it. This is, you know, a shot at the, a shot at New York. Seriously, this is exactly
right on every point. Living in even a semi-Christianized culture makes evangelism easier.
It also makes religious hypocrisy easier, but that will be true anytime the church has success
in her mission. Secularization and Marxification make the gospel implausible to people and makes
the work of evangelism harder. Those who enjoy the blessings of Christian culture will often
want to seek the source of those blessings. And civil law absolutely has a didactic function
in training and shaping people's consciences. Keep up the good work. He's encouraging this
other pastor, Josh. So again, that's the positive take. Good job. There's encouragement here and
in alignment. Then we have another guy, another, I think, I don't know if he's a pastor or not,
but DJ Jenkins, not to be confused with Leroy Jenkins, for those of you who are familiar with
his work? DJ Jenkins retweets this video and says, I think I, I can almost, I can just picture him
with his hand like this. Okay. I can just picture, I think I will choose the way of the apostle Paul
who said to the Corinthians in first Corinthians chapter two, verse two, I decided to know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. So this, this is kind of, this is the, so a couple
with the different positions. There's plenty more than that. But what do you guys think about this?
There's people on both sides who think politics is distracting from the mission that God has called
us to. It's something that pastors and Christian leaders should avoid in the name of just preaching
the scriptures. There's other people and another case to be made that this is something that
Christians ought to be actively involved in. What are your guys' takes on this? And what do you
think and why? I think for Christians to retreat from the political sphere is a way of hating
their neighbor and hating their community. I know it's difficult to find really good,
solid Christian examples of this over the past 50, 60 years, because this retreat has been going
on a long time, you know, Christians from the civil realm. But there's Christians like, we do
have examples throughout history. William Wilberforce was an example who saw the horrors
of the slave trade, and he spent his entire life as a devout Christian fighting to end the slave
trade as a Christian. And you could imagine that it was not a very popular thing because there was
a lot of financial incentives and everyone was caught up in it, from my understanding. And it
It wasn't until like just days before his death that he actually, they succeeded and abolished it.
And yeah, so there's things that Christians uniquely are aware of and should have their moral conscience stricken to fight back against that our culture just simply won't.
And to continue to just separate ourselves from politics, yeah, it's just not loving.
I mean, I literally look out. I got involved several years ago. I started and I showed up at this homeless meeting, a group of homeless advocates in our community. And I had been advocating that it was not best to leave them on the streets where they were overdosing in record numbers.
and I showed up and they this lady stood up in the middle of the meeting and called me a hate group
for for advocating that that was not what was best for those people struggling with mental illness
addictions and basically being left out in the elements where they're not even thinking clearly
because they're all doing things like fentanyl and stuff like that um to basically be in the
worst possible environment, constantly surrounded by life-ending drugs.
And sure enough, in the years since then, we've continued to experience all-time record-breaking
overdoses amongst that community.
Anyways, all that to say, it's just like, as Christians, we know that the unbelieving
world, they're blind to the actual solutions.
They don't even understand what these people need.
And so we just need to remember that.
Like when we're talking about politics,
that like Christians should have insight
into how to wisely govern and influence a community.
So, and I think it is loving to exercise that influence.
Yeah, this, I mean, let's talk about a couple of things here.
Let's try to clarify.
So one of the things to differentiate, if we're going to discern well, we're going to differentiate between any random person or any random Christian being involved in politics versus pastors being politically vocal.
Because that's, I mean, Josh in this video basically talks about, he's like, hey, if you're a pastor, you need to think about the fact that all you need to do in order for things to go bad, for less churches to be planted, is to let everything go blue.
So he's specifically talking to pastors. This guy, DJ, it seems like he's specifically pointing back to pastors.
And he's saying, I think I, as a pastor, will choose the way of the Apostle Paul, knowing nothing among you in Christ crucified.
At the same time, we want to, if we're going to take seriously the objection that DJ has,
this is not a good principle of necessarily a good principle of hermeneutics to just snatch
a verse completely out of its context and act like as if this should be somehow obvious that
it's obviously representative to us in today in, you know, immediate in this context that we're in.
So, I mean, on that front, it's one of the things where, yes, the apostle Paul, he says,
this is what he did. He basically said, hey, I'm going to try to know nothing among you,
Corinthians. I'm not getting all this. I'm not going to get a bunch of information about what
else is going on in your place. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to be there to know you,
to preach the gospel to you. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's,
and again, so what's the standard? Like how much knowledge is too much? Should Christians just not
read newspapers? Should pastors just not read newspapers at all? We don't want to know anything
about people. You know, I want to make sure I don't know anything among you except for Christ
in Christ crucified. So again, it's, it's just not as straightforward in trying to understand
what even Paul was, was saying, uh, to try to make this, this little, this gotcha issue
in the way that, uh, whoever this DJ Jenkins guy is. So lots of issues. Um, again, we,
I'm trying to think what else, I mean, does anybody else have something they wanted to add
right now? Yeah. Can I jump in there real quick? Um, I got two, two very quick exegetical points.
I pulled up that verse that Jenkins referenced, and here's the verse right before it.
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom,
but I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
And he goes on talking about how his speech and message were not about plausible words of wisdom,
but demonstration of spirit and power, so forth.
So very, very quick, if you really want to sit under the teaching of Apostle Paul, then sit under that and say, well, what was he actually saying? Was he saying that I refuse to know all other information or application or cultural issues? That would be crazy considering Acts 17, when he's talking to the pagan Athenians and other places, he's telling them that I'm not your apostle because I'm the best public speaker in the world.
I'm not your apostle because I'm tall or good looking.
I'm not the messenger of God because of those things,
but rather because I keep continuously preaching the truth about Jesus.
So that's exegesis number one is you have to look at that.
The second one hit me as we were just getting ready here,
and it's in the well-known to Christians passage, 1 Timothy 2,
about praying for our leaders.
And if you don't know this one, then check it out.
but I'm going to make a point for those who are a little bit theological too.
First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all
people, for kings and all who are in high positions, presidents, etc., that we may lead a peaceful and
quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of
God our Savior. And here's the point I want to get at, verse 4, who desires that all people to be
saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And so the point I want to make there is many
people know this verse about lifting your hands and praying for leaders and saying,
don't hate your leaders, but pray. But sometimes we miss the point. Paul says,
if we pray that we are going to be free to lead a peaceful, godly, dignified life,
more people will be saved. So don't get to the point as some Christians do and make yourself a
martyr and say, I can't wait for the hard times, then I can't wait for persecution because, you
know, with persecution comes more real Christians and stuff like that. You know, it'll show who's
real and who isn't. It'll cleanse the church. Paul says here the opposite. Pray that the laws
of the nation will allow Christians to live quiet, godly, dignified, peaceful lives because
God wants more people to be saved. And that means that we should desire for the nation to be more
receptive to just Christians being able to hold services, to talk about Jesus, to talk about Jesus
and him crucified. And if there's more friendly laws towards Christianity, more people will be
save not less so those things and those things i strongly agree with those uh posters yeah so i
feel like howerton's quote in this little video we watched it connects to that larger conversation
we were uh engaging in it a bit last time we were together and it's it's this this question of the
third wayism like is there a way to to not be partisan and not specifically identify
with the political left or right and be a faithful christian and be a faithful christian pastor
um and and so i i think that that dream of the neutral christian leader and even the neutral Christian is slowly losing steam but it also losing plausibility
And the reality is, is that the chickens are coming home to roost and the seeds of secular
Marxism that exist in the leftist ideology, we're starting to see the effects.
And it's really important. I think you have to take an ahistorical view of politics in America to try to say yes and, both and.
And there's this that's right over here, this that's right over here, like that whole idea.
um howerton touches on it where he's like hey the the left rejects a biblical view of people
and takes a uh a marxist idea of class struggle and uh who who people are and how they're
structured and what their purpose is it looks them at uh at them as primarily economic beings
It puts people apart as the oppressor and the oppressed.
And if that's your anthropology and your view of the future of what is the good life, what is the good, what is flourishing,
and it's a vision that is diametrically opposed to a biblical vision,
you're not going to end up in the same place as Christ and what he's calling us to.
So just a quick recommendation to you guys and others. I've been listening to the Hillsdale online class on the history of the American left, particularly post-World War II progressivism.
And getting the history is so helpful to realize, oh, that's why we're having these conversations today.
and and so what i would argue and i think uh lusk gives a helpful clarification and kind of caveat
because it's not all like uh what's the right analogy like just uh roses and and sunshine
sweet sunshine in for example the bible belt when it comes to ministry in the gospel and you're like
oh it's texas and so everyone's christian here and speak for you says or just kidding and it's so
or florida for example i don't know if like like and it are free always the one of the brave and
that like and the drunk right like so so just being in a like christian culture or what some
like missiologists call like christendom and there's debates around hey are we post christendom
is that better there are different challenges in in ministering in a red state than in a in a blue
state. Like, let's agree. And you can't ignore those challenges in the red state. And yet you
can't equate them because it is absolutely true that law and law and order does set a foundation
for people to understand the gospel. Bitcoin does that because code is law and it sets that
foundation. And the one only other point I'll make is I think you also, we can't simplify the
cause and effect. You can't say it's become conservative, therefore now it'll become,
it's easier to share the gospel, right? You also have to look the other way. Well, you know what?
What if they became Christian and now they're becoming conservative?
And so the question, like, so I live in Portland and churches in Portland have to start where the
people are at. And I think it's a good debate, and maybe we'll have this, of do you start with
conservatism in Portland? Or do you start with aspects of the gospel that people in the culture
would say, wow, well, like that there's something there or that Jesus, that aspect of Jesus
of caring for the poor. I engage with that. I resonate with that. And you start them there.
You micro dose some Jesus love for the poor. And then when they're ready for the mega dose of
he will judge the wicked you get there so i think that's a question of of strategy and apologetics
and a little bit of tim keller a little bit of charlie kirk and and i'm comfortable saying to
each his own and different callings different people different giftings without trying to say
let's throw out all and burn all our tim keller books uh or like forget charlie kirk because look
he was too confrontational and he was mega and no christian would be mega like i don't know i'm
i'm comfortable with some of the tension but that's just me yeah third old third way ash over
there uh yeah i would say uh i would say is it this those two those two lusk and howerton together
are really balanced i would say the and here's what i would say i'm probably a little bit more
I called myself the token pietist before we started here of this podcast.
That may just be me trying to be my own martyr, but I would say that Howerton and then Lusk's very encouraging corrections or sharpening, he didn't even really correct.
This is the right conversation to be having.
Let me say that.
This is like the center of the conversation.
And that's what I appreciate about these posts, because I think that there's little things I could disagree on, which you alluded to, Osh.
He says, eventually they'll look for its source.
I don't think I think that's too hopeful because you might find yourself with a conservative wife and family with your guns and your money and say, that was all I was looking for.
Thank you. And many people do because of the flesh.
but the point is this is a this is the center in my view of the conversation we should be having as
christians is where is where should you fall on this uh we're on the right road where do you fall
on that part of the road and that's what i appreciate and and how do we how do we still
speak to um you need to be aiming towards christ at all times without just saying well you know
some people like killing babies and some people don't do whatever drug addicts think that they
should do. And I'm unfairly talking about the right and the left in terms of extremes.
And so there's not an equivalence, just like what Ash said, there's not an equivalence.
And we have to keep in mind as Christians, I brought up the angle scale when we were off,
when we were before the pod too. We need to keep in mind, there's a journey
the journey isn't just I got saved and baptized. The journey goes on. In fact, most of what the
apostles and John and Jesus are talking about is going from there to maturity. And at some level,
sometimes on the right or sometimes in churches, we forget about the fact that you're supposed to
be going from salvation to maturity. And actually that's the job of the church. We can't forget that
job and yet we should be, um, we should be active. And I would even go so far as to say, I know,
I know you four, I especially know Ash and Ryan for a long time.
Guys, if you're listening to this and you're not involved, your opinion absolutely does not matter.
If you're, if you have an opinion, but you're not involved, your opinion is of zero value.
We, in other words, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it. Like that,
That's one of those.
Right.
And it's not that hard to get involved.
Yeah.
So this angle scale is interesting.
So James F. Engel wrote the book, What's Wrong with the Harvest, published by Zondervan back when it was Zondervan, 1975.
So he has steps to Christ.
So no awareness of God is the beginning.
Some awareness, contact with Christians, interest in Jesus, decide to investigate Jesus, understand, grasp the truth about who Jesus is, understand the implications, acceptance of Christian truth, acceptance of the implications.
Christian's decision to surrender to Christ, gaining confidence in their decision, experiencing
change in their life, learning the basis of their faith, learning the Christian disciplines,
and then sharing their faith with others. That's kind of like the maturity cycle of a Christian.
And so I think there's a lot of people who, in the name of purity, they want to act like
God just downloads all of the information at one time when somebody becomes a Christian. Boom,
They just download fully mature in a hundred different ways.
And that's just not how this has ever worked.
Like this is just not how this, this, that God operates.
God, like he does miraculously intervene.
Like we are, as we mentioned, we are Calvinists here.
And yet God has means, God has sowing and God has designed the world in every way to
work according to the principles of sowing and reaping.
And so we can't act like actions don't have consequences and decisions that are taken at an individual level, at a family level, at a cultural level, church level, whatever it is, aren't going to then have downstream effects.
And so I think one of my great hopes is just that more and more people will just wake up to and not being childish. We're called to be childlike, but not childish. And so trying to have wisdom to discern where those things are different is important.
because like there's two, so many people, many Christians have a very childish understanding
of evil and of how good and evil work and how do, you know, and how they multiply. And so
that'd be one thing. One example of this that I think would be helpful for clarification
is the story of the Good Samaritan. There was, I almost, I didn't end up writing this piece,
but I had this idea. I have too many, I have so many pieces that I want to write, but then
they just can't get around to them. I can't get around to them all. So I'm a piece that I want to
write about the story of the good Samaritan, because as, as I looked at the last election
and I looked at, you know, the people who, the, the available options, you know, you have
functionally speaking, you have Trump or you have Kamala, you've got, you've got her. And then
you've got some other guys who didn't have a, you know, much of a chance of actually winning.
And so as, as I was just looking at that, at that situation of like who to, who to vote for
in my personal opinion, just given where their positions are on stuff, there was no way on God's
earth that I was ever going to vote for Kamala Harris, just due to her position on abortion and
a hundred other things in terms of, I mean, again, we could talk about trans issues, trying to take
kids away from their parents because of those issues. There's a hundred different things that
we could give. So I think one principle that'd be really important to point out is that this
this question will not, it'll look different depending on the context. It'll look different
depending on quote unquote, what time it is. The men of Issachar were a, these were mighty men.
These were guys who in the old Testament were praised for knowing, having unique wisdom to know
what Israel should do in a certain season. And so these were men who, while David was fleeing
from King Saul, David had been anointed as the next king and Saul was trying to chase him down
and kill him. These men made the decision, and this is among other things, they made the decision
to go and ally themselves with David while he was an enemy of the state, an enemy of King Saul.
And they are commended for this, again, political treason that they committed,
according to the letter of the law at that time.
And so it's this type of wisdom that we need to figure out,
okay, wait, what time is it?
Because there's things that God calls us to do,
like in trying to discern what God wants us to do,
there's some times where the thing that we should do
is the exact opposite of what we should do.
And even that's spelled out for us to do in other situations.
So that would be one thing.
So as I was thinking about the story of the Good Samaritan,
it just hit me that there's three people who are,
three people come along and find the beaten man, find the Samaritan. The first two are religious
men. And neither one of them crosses over to help this Samaritan, this injured Samaritan man,
because they didn't want to violate their ritual purity. It didn't mean that they would have been
sinning by touching him and by helping him, but they would not have been able to minister in the
temple. That was the thing that because if they were unclean, they wouldn't have been able to do
it. They would have had to wait a period of time to have had to go through this process.
And so it wasn't a question of sinning. It was a question of maintaining their ritual purity,
which led them to make the decision not to help this person and love their injured neighbor.
And so then it's the third man, it's the Samaritan who comes along to help the
the injured Jewish man. And he doesn't let his ritual purity matter to him and stop him
from helping and saving this man's life. And so I think that what a lot of us and a lot of pastors
need to reckon with is trying to figure out, okay, what kind of situation are we in?
Because in my mind, voting for Donald Trump is not a decision that I just trivially, I take
trivially because I agree with Donald Trump on everything, his treatment of women, his, you know,
his attitude towards his business. Like it's not, it's not this thing where I just get this giant
thrill for voting for Donald Trump at the same time, because of what was at stake.
Like it was that I came to a place where I just basically was like, eh, for me to not vote for
Trump, given everything going on in the country would be akin to me leaving the, would be akin to
me leaving the injured man there on the side of the road. And specifically, it's actually even
easier for me in this case, because it would actually be my children who would be lying on
the side of the road, who are, you know, being literally offered up to Molech and offered up to
whoever you want to, if this other person came into office. And so in my mind, I'm like, okay,
so there is a case, there's a time to be ritually unclean for the sake of doing the bigger picture
good thing. And God will judge you if you don't do that. If you don't weigh what time it is and
understand it appropriately, God will judge you for that. And so we have to, so again, this is not
this super nice and clean where we get to all feel great about the decision that we're making.
Again, there's, again, a hundred things that I disagree with Donald Trump and I think he's a
nightmare in a whole host of ways. And yet at the same time, I would, it's the easiest decision,
on the other hand, it's the easiest decision to vote for him because of what time it was.
Another thing that I would say is, another thing that's important, and I wish I had the example for half of this,
but there were times in which Jesus agreed with the Pharisees,
and there were other times where Jesus agreed with the Sadducees.
And so Jesus didn't let the fact that he was going to be agreeing with either the Pharisees or the Sadducees
dictate whether or not he was going to state and align himself with one of those things,
because Jesus's goal was, I only do the things that honor my father. And Jesus's goal was,
I want to love my neighbor. And so that's what drove Jesus to do what he did and he didn't do.
And so for the example with the Pharisees is Jesus agreed, Jesus talked about the resurrection.
And so because of that, the Pharisees could have turned around and go, yes, he's our guy. You know,
this is our guy. And yet we know a hundred examples of Jesus going to town and ripping
them a new one in many cases because of how awful they were. And so I think what a lot of people,
at least who I've talked to, who are suspicious of specifically of Christian political involvement,
the ones who I'm seeing are largely more skeptical of aligning with Trump in that
political alignment. I don't see a lot of people who are concerned on the left, who are concerned
with aligning themselves with political power.
This has been going on among left-wing Christians
for many years.
They have not neglected to take part in the political areas.
You could look at the African-American church.
You could look at a lot of these other churches.
They have been very politically active, and it shows.
By virtue of not neglecting these areas
and neglecting stewardship and faithfulness
in some of these areas,
they have achieved a level of political power that is frankly, I mean, it's impressive.
It really is.
In Oregon, we haven't had a Republican governor basically my entire life.
Yeah.
It's been one party rule.
That is total domination.
And that is entirely because the Christians in Oregon don't vote.
and they're not politically active.
And I literally, I say they don't vote.
It's 50% of the church turns out
during a presidential election.
It's only 50%.
And that's the high end.
On like the lesser elections,
it can be as low as like 10 or 15% sometimes.
It's just total abdication.
And it's like, that's why there's such a giant pushback
on Christians getting involved in politics.
I wanted to add something.
At the beginning, Ash was talking about what it's like in a really liberal city.
I had the experience of living in two liberals in Portland Hawaii and now a conservative small town in Oregon And I noticed a couple things
If you are a conservative Christian living in a liberal city, I almost now believe you really have to be radical to stay super faithful.
because if you're not, the city,
if you want to call it again, this sounds cheesy,
the liberal air that you're going to be breathing
every single day will influence you
more than you're influencing the community around you.
And it's just like the picture of soccer.
You can't just play defense and win a game ever.
You have to play offense.
If you're not playing offense,
you're going to lose every single game
or maybe a couple of ties.
But it's like, it's that thing where, like, I think the offense in this picture is building the kingdom.
It's Matthew 28.
And really trying to impact the culture around you, impacting the laws, standing up for the fentanyl addicts that are on the verge of death on the streets that are just being handed clean needles instead of actual help.
Nobody's being held accountable.
That's the justice system.
It's fighting for things like that.
It's seeing the lies, calling them out, and rallying support to try to do something about them.
Otherwise, I honestly think we can end up getting some—
I think we're going to get the guilt on our hands more than we understand.
So, yeah, it's—
And the other thing, and this is a really subtle thing.
and this touches two different topics i don't think people understand the impacts
uh their environment have on their soul we talk about the companion of fools we talk about how
important it is to hang around like good influences things like that company corrupts good morals
yeah yeah uh a city will influence you i've now been removed from two liberal cities and i'm now
in this conservative thing and i'm literally like my little my conservative my little meter
is just like i'm getting more and more confident bold courageous i can confirm that yeah and i see
that in ryan my my standards uh right and wrong it's like no like that's absolutely wicked like
the standard gets dropped so low in certain cities that you're just like,
it just becomes normal.
I would say, I would argue that it's the equivalent of going into a home with no rules.
Like, it's total lawlessness.
And you're just like, oh, well, that's just the way it is.
I just guess we don't even call the police here in this community because they don't respond.
And it's just like, that's insane.
I now live in a community that people will call.
Like if you get your $5 flower pot stolen off your porch, they're calling the cops and they expect the cops to come out.
Like we're in different worlds.
And I actually think that it's not a good thing when all good laws are all thrown out and the standards just keep getting lowered and lowered and lowered.
and again I also I do want to throw out there I'm sympathetic because it's like dude it is
it is super challenging living in a really really liberal city because if yeah if you have any sort
of high standards you will get chewed up yeah um yeah anyways I think it is it is it's one of
these things where we need to know why we're doing what we're doing right we need to know
why we're doing what we're doing and we also we need to make sure again what is what is motivating
us is love for God and love for your neighbor. Because there's been a lot of people for whom
the dichotomy, the false dichotomy that's presented them is you're either going to love your neighbor
or you're going to be involved in politics, or you're either going to love God or you're going
to be involved in politics. And it is just staggering the historical and biblical ignorance
of that position. Like it is so historically uninformed. And so with that, we will,
sure, we have another thing here illustrating this. Another tweet. There's Victor Marx. Here
we go. The big lie that has infiltrated the Western church is the church shouldn't speak
about politics. While the Bible is literally full of prophet politicians and prophetic politicians,
religion will always be political because politics by nature are religious. The church was and always
will be biblical and therefore political. The church must be involved in political and public
debate. The church is the moral conscience in a sexually perverted world, and perverted in a
hundred other ways too. The church is the mental stability in a LGBTQ plus depressed world. The
church is the only voice of life in a baby killing, abortion celebrating, and death worshiping world,
literally. Have you seen Joseph? Have you seen Daniel? Have you seen Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego? Have you seen Moses? Have you seen Elijah, Elisha, Nehemiah, Esther? All of these people,
all of these people are biblical figures who took like whose actions were inherently political
there were constant political consequences jason in the book of acts oh these people are there
were the politicians the the local people were saying you know non-christian people were saying
these people were turning the world upside down jesus was not killed because of his unpopular
religious sermons that were divorced of any context or divorced of any effect on the surrounding
culture. Jesus threatened the political order of the Romans, threatened the political order
of the existing political culture of the Herodians and the Pharisees. Everything that was going on,
they were politically threatened by Jesus. And so they killed him because of his political
influence. And so it's just not in touch with reality to try to maintain and try to have this
idea that we can just keep our hands clean. We can stay ritually pure by quote unquote,
just preaching the gospel. This is just not, again, it's a misunderstanding in a, you know,
not, it's a misunderstanding of what Christians are called to. So I, yeah. Ash, anything to add?
Yeah, hold on. Let's see if stop.
Yeah, so I think one of the lessons from Charlie Kirk is,
and this is the video we played, touched on this,
Howard's video, and Kirk's pastor who spoke at the memorial,
he gave the illustration of the stream,
swimming in the stream of freedom brings you closer to the source,
who is Jesus.
and there there's something to that and and so i've i think one of the lessons is whoever you are
christians in whatever vocation right you're you're a stay-at-home mom you're a business owner
you're a pastor or you're in politics whatever it is be more bold about your faith stop being ashamed
of Christian morality, wherever it touches, no matter how offensive it is, don't be afraid of
getting canceled. Like Jesus says, right? Fear not, not a hair of your head will perish, right?
But cut off your head, but they're not going to hurt your hair. Fear not, like no matter how much
they cancel you, you might lose your job. You might be kicked off social media, but not a hair
of your head will perish. So courage under fire, unapologetic, and yet compelling gentleness. Paul
exhorts us in the pastoral epistles to correct your opponents with gentleness. Okay, so we don't
have, I think some of the resistance, particularly of the older generation, the Christian evangelical
boomers who avoided the Christian right and the conservative Christian conversations saw some of
like the talk show hosts the rush limbaugh's and some of that and there were these caricatures and
i don't know about you guys but like i think for ryan and i like i was never uh impressed by george
w and like i would just come to faith i went to bible college right as as like so it was the george
w era of of christian politics and i'm like this is like globalism like warm mongering we're gonna
to go in like export weapons of mass destruction yeah we're gonna export our like american virtues
and democracy to the middle east watch your tongue talking about uncle george all right calm down
yeah so like i i was just i was never i'm like if that's what a christian politician looks like i'm
not that impressed and i just kind of opted out of that whole era or ryan and i went and campaigned
for Ron Paul.
Ron Paul came around.
And then all of a sudden, you're like, dude.
So I get it that the church has not always aligned
with the right political heroes.
And there's a sense in which you think,
oh, this is the hero.
This is the savior.
That's an idolatry and a risk.
And so I'm more about let's be issue-focused.
And this is something with William Wilberforce, right?
So he built coalitions around key Christian issues.
And he was unapologetic where a sin in his culture confronted with the Bible.
And he confronted that.
And he didn't care who, whatever party you were on.
If you were going to join him and fight you against that issue, he was going to, he would join you.
And so I think we should be issue focused before part is party focused.
But where there's party alignment, let's not be afraid to align with a party.
right and then the only other thing i'll say is is we should like uh kevin de young and his book
like what is the mission of the church i think i agree with probably 80 of it and honestly i read
it when i was more on the social justice side of things and what they were responding to is
is the like the like hot button issue like this is the the like whatever the the big thing to be
against is. I'll put it on my social profile, whatever flag it happens to be, whatever issue.
DeYoung was responding to the church getting caught up with social justice and certain issues
and telling everyone and binding every Christian's conscience, you need to be about this issue.
And their argument is the church exists to make disciples and plant churches and preach the gospel.
That's the church institutional.
Christians, in your own calling, can be deeply animated and activated over an issue that they believe,
hey, this is biblical and I'm called to work on this issue.
And you can go and try to mobilize fellow Christians to it, but don't make every Sunday about your pet issue.
Even if it's a worthy issue, right?
So I think pastors need discernment.
theology is application. John Frame is right. You can't just breach ethereal ideas and morality
without applying it to the context and the culture. But you also need, you can't let a
particular application and a particular issue outweigh the gospel and a come one, come all,
wherever you are, we need Jesus. So there you go. Again, my trying to go through the needle.
disgusting needle threader
oh my goodness
go ahead
I was just going to say
it hasn't been easy on anyone
over the last four decades
because when you have
I would say the majority of the church
viewed politics as bad
separation of church and state
misunderstanding of it
it exists to keep the state from influencing the church,
not the other way around.
So misunderstanding.
So then the church completely retreated out.
So the difficult part was it took an extremist to try to push back against that
because you would absolutely just get wrecked.
Like Pat Robertson's warning of like the doom to come.
And Pat Robertson was just laughed out of the evangelical circles.
And guess what?
He was rabid.
Everything he predicted, everything he predicted came through.
It's like.
This is, this is where, again, I, we've talked about this with other issues too, where you
have to, you have to recognize that the situation that you're in matters.
Don't give me your Bible verses.
Okay.
Don't give me your conveniently plucked out out of the middle of nowhere, Bible verses
and throw them at me.
They're not going to work.
They have no power here.
Okay.
This is why, because like, like, it's just not going to work because this is the, this
is the situation, right?
Imagine you have a morbidly obese man.
This morbidly obese man, what does he need?
He needs to fast for a long time.
He needs to fast.
Now, again, if you find a starving person, do they need to fast for a long time?
No, they've been fasting.
They need to eat.
They're probably going to eat way more than this other guy is going to eat over the course of a period of time.
And that's not because one of them is an extremist.
It's because they've been extremists, and now we're trying to help them become more healthy.
and so the the american church has been way too extreme it's been extremely absent and extremely
like um left aside their responsibilities for decades and so yes now once we tell them hey
you know once we start telling people hey this you just need to be faithful uh in your in your
local towns in your cities whatever it's going to sound extremist but that's because you've that's
because you've been extremist you've been extremist and we're trying to help bring you back towards
normalcy. And so I think
this is, it's a really big deal. Here we go.
There's one more video we have here. This is
Charlie Kirk talking about this issue.
I was wondering why doesn't the
right have, like the left has dominated
culture for so long to have, you know, the
feminist movement. We can blame that for destroying the
nuclear home. We can blame that for
destroying marriages in a lot of ways.
But how do we kind of
work backwards from that, kind of get back
to like their core American values,
you know, lower the divorce
rate, lower single motherhood,
Things like that.
It doesn't seem to be like a practical solution that's been even attempted by the writer.
Well, the practical solution, we don't have to think.
We need to point people to God and eventually to Jesus Christ.
And that is the sedation, is that people need to humble themselves before the Lord.
They need to go back to church.
They need to get married before they have sex.
They need to stop engaging in debauchery and limitless amounts of drinking and the sins of the flesh.
And understand that there's a God who loves them that wants them to live a certain way.
and it's not a feminist movement
or the Black Lives Matter movement.
We need a movement that is centered
around spiritual eternal principles
and yeah, make America holy again,
make America Christian again,
but a revival will only happen with repentance
and repentance is at odd with pride.
And so we have an entire month dedicated to pride,
by the way, which is you must acknowledge two things.
There is a God and we are not him.
Those two things are fundamental towards having
hopefully the humility of getting in front of your creator, understanding that you fall short
of the glory of God with the eyes on the cross and understanding the significance of what the cross
is and what it means for your life. And with that will come widespread nationwide change.
We are seeing some promising trends. Church attendance is slightly going up. Gen Z,
especially Gen Z men, are more religious than millennial men, and it is increasing and growing.
and young women, we got some things to work through.
But all right, we'll stop there.
This is something I, again, just knowing what time it is,
I think it's really important.
One example of this, somebody else was talking about this.
They said there were kings of Israel
where they were faithful kings in many ways,
but they didn't snuff out the worship of idols.
so it's like we don't have categories for that type of thing very well we're like wait a second
either they're all good or they're all bad and then that makes it easy for us it's convenient
for us because we're lazy and because we want to focus on football and making money and all these
other things we have a problem like with the idea that there can be things can be more complex
and so again the idea that there could be in the midst of like as we're pursuing you know to to
represent and we want our society to become more aligned with Jesus. And we want our people to
understand and see, people around us to see the goodness of God's revealed will for marriage and
for all these other things. It's easy to be like, oh, well, I don't want to give people a false,
you know, a false hope that if they get this good thing, if they, you know, if it's easier for them,
then maybe they won't, you know, then maybe they won't follow Jesus. In the name of that,
like to try to, to try to, I don't know. It's like cutting off your, your nose to spite your face.
It just doesn't make, it doesn't make any sense. And so again, we have to recognize that yes,
we as Christians, if you're a Christian, you will still be needed. No matter how good and
Christian your society is, you will still be needed to stand up and be salt and light,
especially, especially if there are Christians who are politicians. Like this is why Wilberforce
in 18th century 17th century whatever it is 17th century England his arguments his methods were to take the scriptures and hold it up to them and say you being hypocrites You love
money more than you love image bearers of God. Like this is, it's wrong. It's wrong. You're
content to make money at their expense. It's wrong. And the reason it had so much power was
because these were a deeply Christian people who had these things inculcated and they were
hypocrites at certain points. And so hypocrisy is not, the fact that there will be hypocrisy is not
a reason not to pursue the broad Christianization as much as we're able to within a culture.
At the very, very least, we had a little small emergency. This little one got an injury, but
at the very, very least, go back to the first Timothy and say, I want to pray that I will live
in a country that at the very least is friendly to Christians living their lives, literally living
your life, where he says living godly, peaceful, quiet lives. And then you go from there. So if
you're going to a place where every Christian is called a racist, every Christian is called
everything phobe, every Christian is called whatever, now you're in a place where
cultural and even legal action can be taken against you for just leading a peaceful, quiet,
godly life and talking to your neighbors about the Lord. So that's like the floor.
And we have to admit that there isn't equivalency in the nation that we live in now.
And this is becoming more and more evident as the responses to Charlie Kirk's murder continue
to double down and triple down and quadruple down. Yeah. Hillary Clinton. Yeah. Yep.
yeah the problem is white christian men right yeah let's i mean we got we got a few minutes
here let's close out and just touch on this this other question i'll put this to you guys whoever
wants to answer so i do think there is a question and a more open question i think we've established
that christians being involved in politics like this is something that we're called to do
But in terms of the pulpit, in terms of the place of the role of the pastor of speaking to political things, we've seen in the last four or five years with COVID and these things, we saw what happened when pastors tried to pass the buck and tried to avoid it altogether, which actually looked like going, which actually looked like being very political and closing down churches and making people wear masks and all kinds of other things.
But we have people who don't want to get political, at least on certain things. There is a healthy component to that, right? There is a danger in being the church where the American flag is higher than the Christian flag or where every sermon you're talking about the political topic du jour.
and that's being like, there are churches where this is actually a real live issue.
So maybe kind of speak to that. What does this look like to, how do we do this well? Not saying
that we need to do this perfectly, where if we don't do it perfectly, then we shouldn't do it at
all. No, we should be content trying to fail and be faithful and it's going to happen. But what does
this look like? If you were trying to encourage or think through again, as some of you have been
pastors, like how do you, or are, or have been pastors, how do you think about the, the, a healthy
relationship between, you know, these topics or with this topic? Yeah, I was going to say, I mean,
it's, it's, uh, I've read a lot of D. Martin Lloyd-Jones sermons and he's always been a person
I've looked up to as far as like, he had a deep insight into the brokenness in their culture at
the time and every single sermon that he had uh what is right in front of you as a preacher
is your source of illustrations and um that powerfully bring points home to your your church
um and it's it's super i think it's super necessary i mean i i actually i've been i was
talking about this to my boys this past week.
How do I teach them without giving them real life examples?
When, you know, when it says you were to like,
as you're walking and sitting and talking with your kids,
like, dude, you're like, as fathers,
we should be constantly giving real life examples
and illustrations of the points that we're talking
or we're teaching them.
It's the same thing with a pastor.
there has to be an enormous fear of God and no fear of man and if those aren't if those aren't
realities it becomes very uh I think it gets a little bit lopsided because I mean and I say this
as like you know I think everybody all men have struggled to some degree with the fear of man
um but when you're up in front of hundreds and hundreds of people like that your fear of man
gets amplified and you can get terrified because there's literally, there's, you can, if you preach
specifically about an issue in our culture today, you will lose people in your church. And you have
to be willing to do that. Otherwise it's a fear of man. And it's just, you know, and so it's,
but, you know, I think we're also coming out of several decades of like seeker sensitive,
even though we won't call it that, but like we've adjusted church. Church has changed,
tradition's gone like churches all across the country have radically changed how how they do
everything over the last 40 years because they've always been looking oh well how is it going to
make them feel and you know we don't want to offend them oh we want to make it more inviting
we want to give it you know their context all this stuff and we threw out everything and it's like
was that good i don't think so and i think we're i think we're this is probably i would argue and
say this is going to be the beginning of several decades of the young, especially the younger
generation is going to be wrestling with everything. Why did my elders stop singing hymns? Why did
they stop? Why did they show up to church? Why did they change the way they dress and change this
and change that? And it's like, what was all that good? And yeah, I think we're going to be
surprised at how much change there is in the decades to come man i mean i think bitcoin is a
good illustration and i'm gonna try and tie it in a bit but it's like it it does prepare people's
hearts for the gospel we we've seen that we have probably a couple dozen examples at least just
from what we've seen and we know there's a lot more.
And it's surprising.
And I think in similar ways,
Os Guinness had this old, this classic book
from the mid-2000s called Prophetic Untimeliness.
And his whole argument is,
if you look just like the culture,
if your message is the same as the culture,
you're no different and so you have nothing to offer you know nothing yep
right I'm a percent and so you need prophetic untimeliness so you need to
know your time and what what people want like the whole itching ears people will
attract for themselves right teachers that match what they want to hear like
that's that's a specific warning in scripture yeah so are the people
listening to you pastor like are they there because you're the one that tickles their ears
is that how you got your crowd is by doing the exact thing that the scripture warns about
yeah um and and so the
yeah so i i would say being untimely and um but still loving people it's the same i think a good
analogy and the internet like there's some discernment bloggers there's some like really
strong opinionated guys in social media that will say it how it is i'm just saying it how it like
and they're just offending everyone and they get their outrage and look at that now they have
it goes viral because of outrage um i think i could bring to mind some
some like possibly racist comment videos that went went viral this last week that like they
got their attention maybe they wanted um but you don't do that with your like unbelieving grandma
yep right you actually sit with her and listen and you pray faithfully and you share the gospel
in a way that is compelling even though you come from a different generation she has a different
perspective you still genuinely want to see her under faith and you don't want to with one
conversation close the door to relationship so that you never get to talk to her again
and so i think we have to have we need to be courageous but also have the long view in mind
and and and think relation like i'm not trying to close doors or close minds
but i am trying to challenge assumptions
there you go there's the balance again there you know what i had you guys like my first two guys a
question. One of the things that I've seen, and I was talking with a brother about this the other
day, I know this could bring a bigger conversation. There are weaknesses that have been in the church
that haven't been addressed from even when us in this podcast were going to church. They haven't
been talked about they haven't been uh admitted that they were things that were wrong i i and i
literally all bring up public school for example how we were all sent to public school and how evil
that was um so it hasn't been addressed yet and we're still going on and we're trying we're trying
to move forward and our generation it's it's interesting you're saying you know i was the
zoomers charlie was saying the zoomer population of believers is increasing you know why our
population of the millennials didn't increase because we were all sent to public school.
And it was a miracle of God that any of us are walking with the Lord today.
Yeah.
And it's like, I'm going to look around, you're just like, I literally have hardly any peers.
They're all gone.
I lost all of them.
And that's actually super sad.
And you're like, wow, that's, and then you're like, yeah, it's no wonder we didn't really
have that big of a, we didn't really transform the church because there was none of us.
And so, but here's the interesting thing.
The younger generation, the next one down, the Zoomers, dude, they see the same things that we did, and there's more of them, and they're just as bold.
And so here's the thing.
They're not going to let it go.
They're going to bring it up, and they're going to be called overzealous.
And guess what?
The Lord is not going to let those things go until they're dealt with, until the rot and the infection is scooped out of the church.
And so my question is, do you guys have a word for some of those young people that the temptation to the older generation is going to be to squelch them and call them immature and call them overzealous and things like that?
Do you guys have any advice for them?
You still must belong to a church.
If you're a Christian and you're a Zoomer.
And the temptation, which just to make a couple call-outs,
like Mark Driscoll's strong words about leave your church
if they didn't talk about Charlie Crankin,
and others saying the same thing,
in my opinion, that's going to have about a 50% total fallout rate.
In other words, people who see that and decide their pastor isn't hardcore
are going to leave their church and look for another church
and discover that there aren't any that are hardcore enough for them
and then not be in a church.
and if you do that you're failing to be a disciple of jesus uh completely and i've told people here
on the islands you know the islands are small in hawaii so there's not that many to choose from
and i've told people here that you need to sell your house sell your car sell your dog
pack up and move to the place where you think there's a good church go to mark driscoll's
church i don't care because you'll find out uh you'll find out how that works out in the end
What's that?
Well, I mean, I care, but yeah, you're sure.
Well, at least if you were to do that, at least, here's my point.
At least if you move to Arizona and join Mark Driscoll's church, you'll have the chance to experience the outcome of that perspective.
Sure, sure, sure.
Grow up a little bit.
And so if I can say, as a practicing current pastor, something that was really touching about one of Vody's last interviews with his protege, I can't recall his name, the Zambi.
Lennox.
One of the touching things was Vody brought up the point, what you see online is not reality.
He didn't say it that way.
But what he said is the average church in America is 75, 50 to 75.
Yep.
Are we talking online about the churches that are 50 to 75 and what they're telling their congregations?
No.
Now, I don't know the math, but I'm assuming if the average is 75, that means the majority of Christians in the United States are in churches like that.
Maybe I'm getting the math wrong, like the median versus the average or something.
Sure, something.
The point is, do you think that maybe a pastor of a church of 50 to 75 knows those 10 families fairly well?
Do you think maybe they know those 10 families? And do you think maybe they know whether they're struggling about theological implications of transgenderism or of COVID or of Charlie Kirk better than the internet does?
so yes the answer is they probably do and uh and um voti makes the point that um he believes that
most of those churches are actually trying to steward their flocks well and preaching the
gospel to the greater or lesser extent of their abilities and and their speaking abilities and
exegetical abilities and pastoral abilities and gifting and i think it's really important to just
realize online is not reality. You need to belong to a church. And the majority is like that, a small
group of people. And last point, I know we're already a little longer than you wanted, but
last point is going back to the angle scale. The original angle scale has more details in it,
which are kind of helpful. But the church's purpose is for the equipping of the church members
to become mature in Christ.
It isn't as, I guess I will do one more call out,
Elevation Church, Stephen Furtick,
I remember one of his famous sermons is like,
if you're a Christian, you got baptized last week,
this week, it's not about you.
Wait a second, wait a second.
What is he saying?
You've now joined the Lord's army and our purpose,
your purpose, this church's purpose is no longer about you.
It's about the ones who came in for the first time now.
Absolutely backwards, absolutely backwards.
that would be like saying I'm joining a martial arts gym I'm joining a jiu-jitsu academy and it's
not about the people who are blue belts and yellow belts and stripe belts and black belts and brown
belts it's not about them anymore it's about the one who walked in the door who's checking it out
for the first time yep absolutely false the church is about growing the saints to be equipped to be
more like Jesus to grow into maturity to have these mature perspectives on all the these issues
And if you do that rightly, and this is a little bit, maybe what I'm about to say is a little strong because you do have to speak in all areas, but if you do the gospel and the implications properly, you're going to have incredible politicians.
You're going to have incredible lawyers.
You're going to have incredible carpenters.
You're going to have incredible janitors.
janitors. You're going to have God-fearing people going out and affecting the circles of influence
in their life in ways that you couldn't control and you couldn't predict and you couldn't really
know and only God knows and sees that. So the church in particular, purpose needs to be growing
the people in your church into maturity. And I think that might be lost in some of the conversation
we're seeing too.
Those are some good words.
Appreciate you guys.
Again, we'll leave it there for this week.
We'll be back next week.
Man, I think we're going to have,
we'll see.
I mean, it looks like we're going to have
Megan Basham on to come talk about
some things that have been going down.
There's a number of things
you want to chat with her about.
We've got some other good ones coming up.
Yeah, John Moody's coming up.
Who's the Prince guy, the Bitcoin guy?
Daniel Prince, that's who it is.
We're going to have him on in the next few weeks.
So again, grateful for you guys.
If you have appreciated this,
If you hated this, go – well, actually, if you hate this, ignore this.
We don't want your reviews.
But if you appreciated this, go like, review, basically subscribe, all the things.
This helps other people find this content.
We are grateful for you guys.
We'll be back on the next episode of – on another episode of To the Unknown Pod, part of the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
Bye.