Faith, Politics, and Boundaries: Thinking Biblically about Government and Discipleship

Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today, Nate and I are going to be discussing our, really, how I feel about it, our way-too-long series of conversations around politics. And so I am really grateful, bro, that the inauguration is coming up and that maybe there'll be some other topics we can talk about that don't dominate the newsfeed and, you know, dominate all our thinking. I think I had a really fruitful time thinking about politics from a theological perspective, but at the same time, I'm sort of ready to move on and think about other things, but I think it's appropriate for us to sort of close up and conclude with the inauguration, kind of giving some reflections on everything we've done over the last year or so on politics. Yeah. No, it's been, like I've said many times before, it's been very, very helpful for me. I didn't really get super into politics as I was younger. I think that's kind of typical, maybe, of some other people that might relate to that, but thinking about it from a biblical perspective has been really special for me. Like, it's just helped me formulate my thoughts and question a lot of things, like, okay, why did I think this or think that? Was it because it was just because I was a Christian or because it was like what was supposed to happen? So it's been really good for me this last year to really just ask those questions and kind of dig deeper into things. So I'm looking forward to it. At the same time, I think we all are ready to get past and move on to some other things for a little bit. It's a little over-covered at this point. I would say it's been helpful for me, too. I mean, I, you know, obviously coming up through the education that I did, theological education that I did, you usually address something like Romans 13, 1-4, right? Romans 13, 1-4 is, you know, submit to the governing authorities, that their authority is from God, and so you have this sort of sense of, okay, well, it's okay if we participate in politics. We should submit to our governing authorities. We're not supposed to be out in the streets rioting and trying to change things. Totally get it. But there wasn't a lot of concentrated thought or instruction given on the way we should be integrating into a political system, particularly a political system like liberalism. So this idea that humanity has all this free choice, that, you know, we're part of a democratic system, that we vote, we do all these other things. There wasn't a lot of conversation throughout most of my education on how does that system form and shape us into particular sort of citizens? And how might that be counter to discipleship? And so it's been really helpful for me to think through a lot of these different issues, and I think I really, even over the past two years since I've been writing on this and researching on it, I think I just started scratching the surface of it. I don't think I got through enough. I mean, I've still got about 15 books I want to read on this topic, on this subject, and I probably will. I'll continue sort of researching it after I take a little bit of a breather. But I will say, I think one of the things that I've come to after thinking about it this long is just this. There's a phenomenon, and I'll liken it to my experience with the academic disciplines. So there's a phenomenon in higher education and within academic circles where if you're an expert in one category, you project yourself to be an expert in another. So the disciplines tend to bleed into one another. So take, for instance, something like the biological sciences. Biology, chemistry, you know, the harder sciences, they're really good at observing what's going on in the world and describing the mechanisms by which certain things happen. They're good at that. They're good at that observation. They're good at the testing. They're good at the measurement. They're good at the scientific method. But then there comes this point where there's a bridge beyond the scientific method. There's a bridge beyond those observations, a bridge beyond really what the sciences can handle into other realms of thought, into philosophy, into theology, into religion, and they're not built for that. But because they've got this deep expertise in observing the world and coming up with fancy technologies and life-saving medicines and all those things which are really good, then we give them credibility to speak to ultimate issues when they're really not equipped to do that. Does that make sense? Yeah, they do. They kind of got to stay in their own lane. I will say the more you understand biology, it probably helps with chemistry. Like the more you understand one, it kind of lends to the other, and I think that translates. But you're right. I think you don't want to use one when you should use the other. You have to just use common sense there, and I think sometimes you can get caught up in that because I think your book, Serpents and Doves, honestly, helped me just kind of frame all this and just start thinking about politics because I used to be intimidated by it, maybe. I didn't understand a lot of it. And so, but I found the more I've dove into this, it's helped me understand more stuff, even biblically, just because I think it's opened up, like you said, lines of thinking. But you have to keep each one in a separate place. I think that's important. Yeah, I mean, it's an idea of boundaries. And so, do you take that academic example where we sort of allow expertise in one area to bleed over into areas where maybe you don't have expertise? I think that's sort of what happens with politics. Politics is, and I've said this a million times, I feel like, politics is not trivial. It's really important. These things aren't things that we should necessarily ignore, but they're also not ultimate. And we don't often do the best job of creating those boundaries and allowing those distinctions to stand and then really reasoning through those with those distinctions in mind. And I think that's what I saw probably that was most concerning as I interacted with people who had a different background than me. I am not a politician, never will be. I think my wife has forbidden it. God's call on my life would have to change radically in order for me to be a politician. His call on my wife's life would have to change radically. So I'm not a political guy. I do Bible, I do theology, and I try to do that as best I can. But then I was also interacting with these people who had more of a political slant. And so they're interacting with the politics and then they're trying to integrate their faith. And there's a lot of problems, I think, with that language of integrating faith. I don't love it. I prefer to think of how do we draw politics underneath the authority of God's word? How do we think about it like that? It's not an integration. It's a how do we draw these underneath the authority of God's word? Let's keep everything in its place. But that aside, I think one of the things that I saw when the folks who were coming at it from that sort of political perspective, still Christians, but they were sort of allowing the political tail to wag the dog, so to speak. And so everything gets a little bit, all the language gets a little less careful. All the agendas start to be very well-defined, right? We're going to vote for this candidate. We're going to get these issues through. These are the things that are biblical. This is truth. This is not truth. It all gets very black and white. And I'm just not convinced that that approach lends itself to the Christian community actually bearing witness to Jesus Christ. It's not that I think it disqualifies us. It's not that harsh. I'm not trying to be that harsh. But I do think that there's a way for us to do this more faithfully than we are. Right. I think we need to be more careful with it. I think the big standout for me, like recently, well, not recently, it's been almost coming up on a year that we were at Politics and the Pews. And one of the standouts for me was what you just said. I think it was very clear that your primary stance and your primary background is biblical and theology. And then your secondary is how does this all fit in with that. But then the other side of that is the primary for some people can be politics and having to stay in their lane there. Then they try to secondarily add the biblical aspect of it. And I just don't think it works as well that way. If we're trying to be good stewards of the faith. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look...

Precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah, I think, you know, from there, if I had to guess, and this would be a little bit maybe a little bit polarizing, but from my perspective, my concern with their approach is that they're not being as biblically and theologically, let's say, robust as they might be. A lot of their statements feel more politics, and they're sort of what I would phrase it as they're pressing God's word into the service of their politics, not really allowing God's word to transform their politics. My guess is, and I mean some of them have articulated this to me, is that my approach does not lend itself to practicality. Right? Like, if politics is important and we're not just going to all go off and meditate on a mountain, there has to be some sort of middle ground here that we find between the theoretical, the biblical, the theological, and the practical. And I would say that that was really a good challenge for me to hear. Right. Because it drove me back into the biblical text in areas that I actually hadn't thought of before. So you and I have talked about this, I think, offline. I don't think we've actually ever talked about it on the podcast, but the nature and function of the law in Scripture, and I would argue by extension the law in general, is not to institute an ideal, but to manage disorder. And so if you look at something like Jesus' teaching on divorce in Matthew 19, where the Pharisees are saying, well, if you're saying that divorce isn't appropriate, it's against God's ideal. It's supposed to be a man or a woman, one flesh for life. Let no man rip apart what God has drawn together. Why is it that Moses told us that we have to issue a certificate of divorce? This seems like a dichotomy. Right. And Jesus says, it's because of the hardness of your heart that Moses gave that command, but it was not so from the beginning. Right. And so what's he really saying there? He's saying that God didn't intend it to be this way, but as the world was broken and sin went rampant, he's also recognizing that, yeah, I'm going to fix this in the end. There's a new heavens and a new earth coming. Right. But for right now, what needs to happen? The chaos needs to be managed. If there isn't a law that constrains this evil, this evil will just run rampant. Right. And I think that we're often times, I know I didn't think of it this way for a long time, but if we think about our political process in those terms, that this is not just in restraining evil, but instituting goods that are appropriate and helpful, but limited. Right. So when we see someone, when we see our government doing something or instituting a law to enact justice or something that is sort of inspired by morality that would resonate with a Christian worldview, I don't think, I think we should be applauding that. At the same time, as we're applauding it, we should also be quick to point out that it is limited, that there's more there, that what this good that was just done is gesturing toward most people aren't realizing, but it's gesturing toward the triune God. And that is the quintessential part of the Christian message. It can't be, let's make this broken world as comfortable as we possibly can and then just be okay with it. Right. It has to be, sure, let's make this world as comfortable as we can while also recognizing that there is something far greater for us ahead if we believe in Jesus Christ. Absolutely. And that same passage, it goes on to say that one can stand and defend themselves or one can easily be overpowered, but two can stand and defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken. In that same, I think it's a little further past what you referenced earlier, but I think that's because that's God's design. And his design is not to have gray areas. It is to be black and white. And that's the big difference I noticed when you get put in these conversations or especially like in a conference like that where it's, you know, mostly politicians. You have black and white, like you see clearly like, nope, this is here, this is there. That's because your primary focus is God and Scripture and his law and what he's designed. And I think if you're trying to do it the other way and then bend it when it makes sense or when it's convenient, then you're kind of in gray area. And I think politics can kind of be synonymous with gray areas. I think it just sometimes it's important. We see it all the time. You know, how many times have we talked about that even? Politicians in one campaign are very strong on one thing. And then four years, it might be the total opposite or it's just not even mentioned. It's not even there anymore. And I think it's because those priorities aren't in place. But God's design is for three strands, you know, him and then these two people. And I think if we adopt that with everything, it should be the primary. And then we won't have these issues. But that's that's why I mean, that's why people I think sometimes this is a normal, basic individual out there might have a hard time taking a politician at their word because they live in kind of that gray area. One minute they say one thing and then in another environment, they're kind of chameleons. You know, we've talked about that, too. I think it's not meant to be just when it's convenient. We have to live by that. If we're going to live by that and live by what God's called us to, it has to be in every aspect of our lives, not just whenever it works or when it bends the way we want it to. That's not what we're meant to do. So what I think is really interesting, you know, when we think about maintaining distinctions, maintaining boundaries, I just wrote a piece for Christianity dot com, and we can link that in the show description. But it was on the sons of God in Genesis six. And so this is a thorny issue. And I promise this will relate to politics. I'll get us back there. But the sons of God in Genesis six, sort of this thorny issue. How do you identify them? Who are they? Are they angels? Are they people from the line of Seth? Are they ancient kings? Like what's going on there? And it's a really thorny passage. And so I do not answer that question definitively in the article. But what I do talk about is no matter what option you choose, what I think you have to recognize is that a boundary that God has set is being crossed. And so a lot of times we think about sin as just straight up rebellion. God tells us not to do something and we go ahead and do it or vice versa. Right. You know, he tells us to do something more like, forget that. I'm not doing that. But rebellion can come in the form of confusion and blurred boundaries as well. So when God creates the world, he creates it to be orderly and to be orderly. There have to be distinctions between things. You can't have earth water, right? You either have earth or water. And those two need to be separate because you, you know, you just have these very clear distinctions. There's actually a theory put forward by anthropologist Mary Douglas, who talks about the clean and the unclean animals in the Old Testament being related to their adherence to various distinctions. And when they don't adhere to these distinctions, when they don't fit cleanly into the category, they are then unclean. And so this idea of maintaining distinctions and having boundaries is actually, I think, a really biblical idea. It's a clear, it provides a clarity between all that God has put in place and it creates boundaries, not isolation, but clear definitive demarcations. Similar to the way we might think of the United States, right? You live in Kansas. I live in Illinois. We both cross Missouri to get there. Right. Well, there's not like an obstacle to crossing Missouri. I mean, they don't put up gates or walls or, you know, we're not crawling through barbed wire to get across Missouri, but we still cross Missouri. Right. It's been demarcated. There's a definitive area to it. And so I think that's similar to what we've got. And so when we think about politics, when we think about the church, when we think about civil society, when we think about all these other things, there need to be clear demarcations between them. We have to understand what we're talking about and recognize that these distinctions matter in part so that these various aspects stay separate from one another, but also...

so that we can understand what role each of these actually play. Mm hmm. How far can government really take us? Right? And so once we understand that, well, then that's great. Let's not put more on it than it can actually do. Right. You know, we always talk about, you know, the law can't institute morality. It can't drive people to Jesus Christ. Well, that's a simple way of saying there are limitations to government. There are limitations to the church, too. The church is not supposed to dominate the world in the sense of creating a government that requires certain behaviors. It's not who we are. And so these are built into those distinctions, those boundaries. And I think that part of our challenge as we go forward thinking about politics is just to recognize the limitations of government and then to not only recognize those, but then learn to talk about government with the understanding that government is actually limited. Mm hmm. So it's just one of those things that I think we have to be really careful with. This was always my, I think, my underlying big problem with Christian nationalism. Is that you're putting two things together that I don't think should actually be together. No. It's, you know, the sons of God and the daughters of men. Right. If I go back to Genesis six, you're just, you're combining things that shouldn't be combined. Right. And so I think we have to be very careful about understanding how we demarcate ourselves as the church, how we understand our government and respect our government, but also recognizing that the church is doing something fundamentally different than what the government is doing. Mm hmm. And that our participation in government is in some ways coincidental. Because if if God had placed us in South America, we wouldn't be participating in the U.S. government. Right. And so, yes, there's a certain responsibility that we have to participate in government, but that responsibility can't overshadow our ultimate responsibility to point to and bring glory to God. And I think if we can sort of the way I phrase that, if we can nest our political participation in our discipleship, I think we'll be far better off, but we don't usually talk about it in those terms. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Sure. I'm trying to find this quote. You know, we we acknowledged Jimmy Carter yesterday and had kind of a day of mourning for him. So it got me thinking about like Ronald Reagan was the first president when I was a kid that I remember hearing people talk about. I remember my dad just having adoration towards him and people just respected him. There's a quote that he had about government, you know, not infringing in ways that it shouldn't. It should be small. It shouldn't be a huge factor in our lives. It's just there, you know, kind of like the boundaries you're talking about. Do you think that it has changed the landscape of political, the political landscape has changed from like maybe the era of Jimmy Carter or Reagan to now? I think so, but I would say it like this. I think there's it's easy to say yes. And that's a real problem. Or yes, and we should walk that back. So I'm just going to say yes without any of those implications. I don't think this is the result of mustache twisting evildoers who are, you know, sitting in rooms petting their little kitties and saying, oh, let's let's infringe on people's rights more consistently as a government. Right. I don't I don't buy the conspiratorial aspects of this. Right. More what I see is something that. There's an old comedian, George Carlin. You remember George Carlin? He was I first was introduced to him in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. He's the guy that shows Keanu Reeves and his buddy around. Right. Got he's in there. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, he's there's an old interview with him online and he he's talking about government and sort of the the way that these various government types and big business types sort of move all of us in a direction. And one of the people who was on the panel with him, who was sitting there, accused him of being a conspiracy theorist. And Carlin says something like this. He says, you don't need a conspiracy when everyone's interests are just converging. In other words, if you're all sitting on the same boards, if you've all gone with the same schools, if you're you know, you're invested in the same stocks, you have, you know, the same friends, you're in the same clubs. That's not conspiracy. That's just interest aligning. That's a shared worldview. That's that's more implicit coordination. And man, I think the more I thought about that insight, the more I think he's probably right. Right. And so I think what we have in the United States is we have a number of different interests, including our own, aligning with the way our systems are working. I just heard Peter Atiyah the other day talking on trigonometry, which is another podcast I listen to trigonometry an awful lot. And he was talking about the way food is processed. And he said, he's like, a lot of people attach morality to this. But he said, if I just if I said to you, you have to grow, deliver, store, preserve and make sure it tastes good. All this food to billions of people. Come up with whatever system you'd like, but you have to do this. He's like, I'm not sure that people come up with a dramatically different system than we have right now. And I think there's just something to that logic that we need to admit. Right. Because we're not doing the hard stuff. We're not having to come up with all those solutions. That's right. And I think that so I think, you know, our capitalism, you know, which I'm not anti-capitalism. Right. I'm just saying these things like the way we think about money in the United States, the way we think about entrepreneurship, the way we think about innovation, technology, government, all of these things condition the solutions that we have available to us as a system. And so as we see the government becoming more and more and more and more and more involved, I think that's a more of a natural outworking in most cases than it is a pernicious problem that's moving us toward authoritarianism or something like that. Mm hmm. And I don't think it's particularly avoidable. I don't know that you can actually walk it back. I think if you walk it back, something else will fill that vacuum. We're seeing that with tech. Right. Right. Can we honestly say that technology isn't involved in and I'll use some hard language here and I'm not sure I actually mean it this way, but that big tech isn't involved in manipulating our behaviors? And how would that be better or worse than the government doing it? Like, the point is not, hey, let's choose between a technopoly and, you know, an authoritarian government. The point is, all of these systems push in on us. They they all form and shape us in different ways. And so as we look at that government growth, some of that government growth is actually trying to check things that seem to be detrimental to the public. And that's happening oftentimes in retrospect. You know, the smoking is a great example. I mean, you know, smoking used to be OK. The normal. And all of a sudden it causes cancer and we don't want anybody to smoke anymore. But it was OK, not because everybody was like, oh, let's give a bunch of people cancer because because there wasn't a clear understanding that it was giving people cancer. And so a lot of what the government does is retroactive. And I think we're seeing as things move faster and faster in the tech space and in economics and globalization and all of those kind of areas, the government is going to have to intervene. I don't see that it has I don't see that there are many options there.

Right. All these things Yeah, all these things we're talking about, I think that's important significance here. The Bible doesn't change. All these things we're saying we got wrong, like smoking, you know, we grew up, another example in the food industry, because you mentioned that, cholesterol is something that you're not supposed to have much of, you know. And now we're seeing new data come out and research and stuff, and they're like, no, you actually need cholesterol is like the number one defense against cancer, and eggs are good for you. So, the cholesterol level, I read an article recently about how it was like for a middle-aged man, like a certain number, he probably saw this. And now, they're like, no, it actually needs to be up here. And it's like, the difference here is because, of course, we get it wrong sometimes, because these are man-centric and not biblical. You know, biblical is the one thing, the boundaries and the things that God has set in Scripture are not going to change. We know those. He didn't get those wrong. But all these things we're talking about, whether it's government, food, you know, cancer, disease, all these things, of course, we're going to have it backwards or wrong or upside down because it's man that is at the center of it instead of God. Yeah, and if we don't, if we really start to, I think there's a way for us to make the political environment way too important. And again, what I mean by that is not to say that the government is trivial. I don't believe that. I think it, but I do think we can exaggerate its importance. And part of the reason I think we can exaggerate its importance is because no matter how much it intervenes, it will never be able to fix the whole problem. If we're looking at it for the solutions, we need to look at government for the solutions in a much more limited manner. And what we need to do is be rooting ourselves back in discipleship, rooting ourselves back in and under the authority of Christ, and recognizing that part of the reason that Christians suffer isn't just due to the evil one and all the persecution that he would desire us to have. Part of it is because living under the authority of Christ creates friction with the world, and once you get enough friction, it starts to get hot. And uncomfortable. Yup. And uncomfortable. And so I just think there's something there that we've got to, we've got to sort of back into, and go, we're not exactly in the right. We haven't, if I, I like to think of it in terms of, and you've heard this analogy before, a Russian nesting doll. Right? And so, you know, everybody, I hope everybody knows what a Russian nesting doll is. It's you know, sort of an odd, oddly shaped little doll. And there's all these other similarly shaped dolls inside of it. And so if you imagine what we're really doing is we're saying, okay, I've encompassed everything else in the largest nesting doll. But the reality is there's one more bigger nesting doll that we need to put all of those into. And that bigger nesting doll is our, our faithfulness to the Lord, our discipleship, our glorification of God. If everything doesn't fit into that, if we leave that off to the side and we assume that, well, the political nesting doll is the biggest nesting doll. Now we have a misperception of the world. And we're going, our attention is going to be misoriented, disoriented. Right. Because really God is the most relevant actor or factor in the room. But if we're not recognizing that, we're going to have this sort of skewed, ambiguous, we're going to take actions that really aren't going to help overall the long term, right? We're not going to be moving and breathing within the context of Christ's authority. We're going to be trying to determine our own agenda. Yep. And so all that to say, it's not a question of, Hey, look, never participate in politics. Politics is off-limits for Christians. This is a horrible idea. Nope. It's if we're going to participate, we need to make sure that this biggest Russian nesting doll over here is encompassing all of these other things. That's what it has to be. We have to immerse all of those things under the authority of Christ. And then we can participate. Then we can, we can still be frustrated about how government goes or what an election turns out or whatever. Right. But we never lose hope. I think that's a really crucial. I think as I've sort of meditated on that insight more and more, I think it isn't just related to politics, obviously. It's related to a whole lot. Yeah. And do you think it's possible that some people might in politics might think that they're doing that, but it's sitting next to them and it's not even in the equation? I'm sure there's some cases like that. I think we, you know, there's, this is not intended to be a condemnation of anybody who's doing any of this stuff. Right. But what I would say is I think that we have done ourselves a disservice by talking about faith integration or even to some degree applying our faith. Right. Because it isn't sufficiently immersive. Right. If we don't recognize that politics sits under the authority of Christ and the best possible thing we could do within any political situation is simply to obey the Lord, even if we lose, we haven't quite grasped what we're doing. Right. If what we're trying to do is use our faith to sort of surgically make sure that we make the best of a bad moment, as opposed to saying everything I do needs to glorify God, I think we're starting off on the wrong foot. We're, you know, we're, to maybe use a different sort of analogy, we're picking up a tennis racket to go hit a baseball. You might, you might get a, you might get a base hit, but I almost guarantee you're not going to hit a home run. Right. It's just the wrong tool for the job. Sure. And so I think our starting point for this has to be, listen, our role in the great commission is to extend and enhance the glorification of God. And we do that by making disciples. Every new person who enters into a relationship with Christ is now one more person on this planet who glorifies God. And so that's our charge. It, and, and that involves participating and making the world a little less horrible. Right. It involves, you know, creating order and using the law to sustain order and all those things. It can involve all that. But what I would say is it can't isolate itself from or pull itself away from being immersed in that broader understanding of enhancing and extending the glorification of God. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I forget the name of the nonprofit. They were at NRB last year, but something on the hill. They're friends of yours. Yeah, Hope on the Hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hope on the Hill. So what the work that they're doing, you know, and we had Mark Alford on, and I've talked with him offline. Good friend of mine. He encouraged me with the fact that, and he shared it when he was on our podcast, about the Bible studies that are happening, you know, like in Congress and in different parts of Capitol Hill and then, you know, learning what your friends are doing there and supporting those people. I think that was really encouraging to me because this is hard for me to wrap my head around just us talking about it, and you and I are not in the political space. Like I don't work in politics. I'm not there. And it's hard for us. How much harder would it be for them when they have those pressures constantly around them? You know, because Congress is not all in the Senate. It's not all Christians. It's not all believers. And then people that say they are, are they really leading with that foot forward? So I think it's an even harder playing ground or playing field for them. So I think that's worth mentioning. But it is encouraging. God is moving in that way there. People are doing Bible studies. Like Mark was just saying, there's several Bible studies happening each week. So that's really encouraging. And I know God is, he can take a little and make it a lot. But how much harder would it be for true politicians than it is even us because of those pressures that you and I are never going to experience? I'm never going to feel that pushback, you know, maybe online with somebody.

Like we both talked about, we just don't even get involved with that. Well, I think, you know, your point is well taken because I would say, yeah, I'm never going to be in politics. But I have been in leadership. And in any leadership position, you end up getting to a point where you have to make decisions that are going to be detrimental to someone. And that is, I struggled with that for a long time. Like, how do you, how do you make this call versus that call? Right. How do you decide who's going to get hurt here? Mm hmm. And I still struggle with it. I don't know that there's ever going to be a time if I were in a leadership position again and having to make those difficult choices, whether I would be able to sit back and say, well, you know, let's just do the Spock thing and be cold and hard and horrible about this and just ration it out. I don't think that's the right move. Right. But I will say I think you get an inkling of the idea that there are impossible choices to be made here. And so you're not trying to, and I think this is a really crucial idea, right? Faithfulness does not equal perfection. You're trying to be as faithful as possible within the context that you're in, but recognizing that the world is fallen, the world is broken, and that for you to try to institute an ideal in any given circumstance is probably a fool's errand. And so what you're trying to do is to do the really difficult, hard things of a broken world as faithfully as you possibly can. Yeah. And then recognizing where, you know, as faithfully as you possibly can, suggests that you didn't do them as faithfully as you possibly could. Mm-hmm. Right? Right? That there's a remainder there that you're never going to be able to fill up. Right. And that's where confession and repentance and a desire for forgiveness comes in. It can't just be, you know, oh, these leadership decisions are really tough, period, and let that be an excuse. It still has to be, I know I've hurt you. I know this has been hard. I didn't know how. I'm not capable of making a better decision than this, and I'm sorry. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, politicians have to... We, as people who are watching the politicians, need to give some level of grace because there are impossible decisions that they're making. Right. And we don't feel that weight. We don't ever have to experience that or see it. Ever. Right. And I would say, you know, as somebody who's been in leadership and had to make those really difficult decisions, I still, even this is almost, I don't know, eight years later, I still hear people question those decisions and question me for making them. And I find it, it used to really bother me. Yeah. Now I just sort of sit back and think to myself, in so many ways, they don't understand. And some of the people that I am critical of, I don't understand. Right. And so there has to be, even if we sit back and say, here's my conviction, this is what I believe. I don't think they're going in the right direction. Right. We can make that judgment. We can make that discernment. But I think we have to be very careful about how we articulate that judgment, how we articulate that discernment, because the reality is, these are people in process just like we are. And they may be sincerely trying to live out their faith. And what they need is not condemnation. What they need is support. What they need is encouragement. What they need is guidance. And so we just have to think differently, I think, about the folks who are representing us in government. Right. They're not going to get it all done, man. They're not. No. Because they're human like we are. It's a human condition, man. Right. And listen, I've been a Christian since I was 18. I've been following God with my whole heart since 7-27-98. And I'm 45 now. And there's still seasons of my life where I'm like, someone will tell me or I realized it through reading something or my wife will pull it out. And I'm like, I was trying to, in this area of my life, I was trying to do it on my own because I was having success or I thought I figured something out, but I wasn't having that. I love that analogy you shared about the Russian doll. Like, I think there's many times in my life that I've been successful and God has been that overcompassing thing, you know, surrounding all of it. But there's a lot of times, dude, even this stage of my mature relationship with Christ that I try to do it on my own. So how often do other people do that? You know, I think that is a great analogy for all of us. And that is why this is so important. That's why discipleship is so important. That's why encouragement, you know, in the faith to everyone around us is so important. And it's not just for us. It's anyone that hears this, anyone listening to this right now. We all have that charge. Like, we all have that space in our different aspects and different walks of life where we can encourage people to do that. We're not meant to do things on our own. God is supposed to be with us every step of the way. But if we leave him sitting next to us and try to fill everything else in there and leave him out, then we wonder why that happens, you know. But time and time again, it happens over and over again in my life. And I'm like, man, I should, I should know that by now. You know, like, but our human nature sometimes wants to stray off to the side, little side quests or whatever. So. Well, I'll toss, I'll toss this in. I think one of the major lessons that I learned this year, these last couple of years as we've been talking about politics is related to civil religion. And I think that part of the reason I've been so sort of passionate to think through like that Russian nesting doll analogy, the immersion of politics under the authority of Christ, not talking so much about integration, but talking about drawing certain things under the authority of the word of God and really understanding them underneath the authority of the final authority for life and faith, you know, all those kind of ideas is because I'm watching how civil religion becomes sort of infectious within a society. Now I've had conversations. I had a conversation with Peter Miller. People can go back to that podcast and listen to it. He didn't feel like civil religion was as problematic as I do. I think we disagree on, on how pernicious it actually is. But from my perspective, part of what we're dealing with is the application of Christian language and symbology, ritual, all those kinds of ideas. We're seeing that merging with the state, seeing that merging with civil society. And so we could talk about, you know, the laws that are out there right now on the 10 commandments. We could talk about Christian nationalism. We could talk about, you know, the display of certain biblical verses in and around, you know, different places in Washington, DC. We could, there's tons of things we could talk about, but I think the, what I've come to be convinced about is that, that we need to recognize the difference between a country that is inspired by the word of God, inspired by certain biblical texts and people who are, who recognize that the Bible is God's inspired word. Those are two very different things. One suggests that we're cherry picking what we believe to be authoritative and good for our lives. And so we'll take the 10 commandments or at least the bottom, bottom five, right? We'll take those. We're certainly not Sabbath people, right? America is not given to rest. And we, we want to leave out that whole part where this is the only God and it's God alone. And let's leave that whole part out. That's, that's no Bueno. But we'll, we'll take, yeah, don't murder people. That seems right. That's good. Don't steal stuff. Okay. Coveting. Really? I mean, we, we like our pursuits, so we'll, we'll downplay that one. Like my point is we, we get, you know, the first one, the one that's inspired by certain biblical passages gets to decide it becomes the authority. We become the authority over God's word, pulling portions out of it and saying, this makes sense to us. The latter, a people who believe that the Bible is inspired by God. We don't get that choice. Right. Whole thing matters. It's not gray areas should be black and white. Yeah. So I think American civil religion is, is more pernicious than we've given it credit for simply because what it's doing is it's selecting out of Scripture what should or should not be authoritative versus what Christianity does. It says, nope, it's not our authority. It's Christ's authority. He's been given all authority in heaven and on earth. And our job is to learn to live underneath that authority. Whole thing. It's not, hey, learn to observe the commands that I have given you as long as that's okay with you. Right. It's learn to observe all my command, you know, all I've taught. And so I think that.

When we think through some of these things, that's another major problem, is that we continue to sort of plow in and try to apply biblical and theological language to some of our civil systems. And I'm not saying there should be no integration there. Our systems are in some sense, I think, sacred, but there's a difference between saying that God has ordained these systems, that they are sacred systems, that we should see the theological reality in them, and making very specific claims about what the United States is, what a given law is, what a given policy entails. Those are two very different things in my mind. Right. No, totally. I think... Go ahead. I was just gonna say, when I first got saved, I heard the analogy, you know, like I heard a pastor talk about being on a fence. You can't have one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom and expect God, you know, to do everything that he says he's gonna do if you haven't chosen clearly which master you're gonna serve. It's impossible to serve him and the world at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And I think those are the sort of... One of the things I've been increasingly asking people to do, I did this men's talk in Virginia, and one of the things I suggested to the men, I said, just, I want you to picture a pie chart in your head. And I want you to divide out and sort of slice up that pie, everything that's important to you in your life. How much of that pie are you going to give God? Mm-hmm. It's an impossible task, and everybody knows you're setting them up, right? Because even if you gave God 98%, 99%, all you have to do is go back to Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5 and realize that's not enough. God doesn't want part of your life or even the lion's share of your life. He wants the whole thing. Mm-hmm. And that's where I think we sort of miss it, is that these things can't be taken in part. They have to be taken as a whole. Mm-hmm. You don't get to claim that, yeah, thou shalt not murder, somehow, yes, I think it makes you moral if you don't kill anyone, right? It's a good moral precept, but it's lacking. Yeah. Because you don't understand really why you're not killing someone. Right. There's not a theological reality there. You're still floundering. You're not quite grasping it. I think that's the importance and the major significance here of why discipleship is so important. Because until somebody really feels that relationship, that's really what we're supposed to have with Christ. People think, I hear people all the time say, well, I just struggle in this area. And in my own life, I've uncovered just through reading and just listening to teachings, my pastor's talked about it recently, even. The more we get in right relationship with Christ and the more we fall in love with him, the more he's in the core of our center, of our everything, everyday life, the more we want to live in accordance with him and live in his ways. And then it's like, oh, that last 10% that I didn't want to give up, it's a no-brainer. Like the more we fall in love with God, the more we invite him into our everyday life, our thoughts, like what we watch, what we listen to, all these things, it becomes easier because you realize, like, I need to give him all of it, because clearly I'm going to screw it up. I mean, that's how I feel. If I try to do it on my own, like I was saying earlier, it's the same result. Even though I think, oh, I think I'm on the right line of thinking this time, or I think I've figured this out. If you don't include him completely, you're going to get the same result if you keep doing the same thing over and over again. Even if it's just a little bit, like you said, 99%, you might think, oh, that's pretty good. And yes, that's good. That's better than other people maybe around you, but that's not the standard. We can't, like, I think I see that a lot in my own life, just in our culture, justification. Well, I'm doing better than this person, or man, I've got more fruit in my life than maybe this pastor does. You can't look at it as another human being as your compass or your guide of where you're at and like how that state, how you stand with God. I think we have to shift that and make sure we're bringing that big Russian doll. I love that analogy. That's like one of the best analogies I've heard you give. Thanks, man. I'm serious. That's great. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I agree with you, and I think once we start to realize that as humans, we're designed to be independent on as opposed to independent from God. Right. Like, we are built to be dependent on Him. We're not built to be independent from Him. And it's sin that's sort of driven us away and given us this idea that our limitations need to be overcome and that we need to overcome them. There are probably certain times when that's true, but I think from a biblical and theological perspective, what we need to realize is that those limitations are designed to drive us back to dependence on God, to recognize that we need Him, but we can't do it all on our own. We can't even collectively do it all on our own. Right. We're always going to have this remainder where we can't really true ourselves up to reality on our own. We just can't do it. And so we've got to be dependent on the Lord. He's got to be not just part of that equation, but the whole sort of thing. Like, He is, instead of trying to do, you know, basic adding and subtracting, we need to recognize that God is calculus. Right. So I think overall, we'll close it up with this maybe, but I think as we move into the inauguration, one of the things I've been thinking about myself is just, things are gonna change, right? There's a lot of interesting things that Trump has said he's gonna do that Elon Musk and What's his name? It's kind of funny. RFK? Yeah, RFK. All these guys, you know, they're saying they're gonna do something. You know, Tulsi Gabbard's in the mix. You've got all these people who are really relatively competent people. They have, you know, domain expertise. They run big companies. They've done some pretty fantastic things. So things will probably change. But those changes won't come without consequences. This is not leading us toward utopia. It's leading us to a different situation in which we're going to have to navigate the world's brokenness in slightly different ways. And I think for Christians to recognize that, that, yeah, maybe getting Trump elected was better for our country than getting Kamala elected. Right. We'll never really know. Right. I mean, that's the funny part. We'll never really truly know because we'll never be able to go back in time and watch, you know, when, you know, the alternate reality where Kamala wins the election and, and see how things turned out. We never really know. Right. But I think we have to recognize that no matter what we think will happen, no matter how we think it will happen, no matter what we hope will happen, the one thing is sure, right, is that God is going to do what God is going to do. And he's going to be leading us toward the new heavens and the new earth. And so,

we can't ignore the politics because they're important. We can't ignore the economics because they're important. We can't ignore immigration because it's important. Like all these things are important, but they need to be nested within that ultimate reality of God is restoring all things. And so whatever we do, what we want to participate in is the expansion and extension of the glorification of our triune God. Absolutely. And then, you know, last thing I'll say, there's so many people every time I get on the Internet, you see somebody in Hollywood or celebrity or whatever. They're like, I'm moving to another country for the next four years. I can't stay here for during this. And I'm like, man, that would be so sad to like put that much hope and faith into an individual. Yeah, like because I didn't agree with everything from the last president and I certainly don't agree with everything with Trump, but I'm not like researching countries that I want to take my family to because I feel so suppressed, you know, like I'm so thankful that I have that hope and faith in Jesus, that he is at the center of it. He's at the top of it no matter what. And he is restoring things. It doesn't matter. You could have pulled someone in that I completely hate, but or completely disagree with. I hate is a strong word. I didn't mean to say that, but you know what I mean? Like I, even if you put someone in there that was even way off the spectrum of what I believe, I still don't think I should tuck tail and run because my authority doesn't come from them. My, I'm still Christ is still at the top. And so that's encouraging me. I don't know how people navigate this without that. And maybe that's why they're leaving the country and stuff like that. But it may be, but I mean, I always go back to the difference between Babylon and Persia in the Old Testament. Nebuchadnezzar was a completely different guy than Cyrus. You know, and, and Daniel dealt with challenges that were far different than Ezra and Nehemiah. Yet they're all doing them faithfully. Who was in charge didn't matter. Right. Because at the end of the day, what God's people are always doing, we are always trying to understand how to live under the authority of Christ and to point to and glorify the triune God. That's what we're always doing. And try to get other people to do the same. Right. And it, and it's not, you know, when I say it doesn't matter who's in charge, it does matter. It has different consequences for different people. But what, what it doesn't change, what it doesn't influence is what we're always doing. Living under the authority of Christ and seeking to point to and glorify the triune God. Even if it becomes the Gulf of America and we buy the Panama Canal and Greenland and all these crazy things that I'm hearing. I'm like, Oh my gosh, like this is going to be another wild ride. But at the same time, we know who's at the top of it. That's right. That's right. We need to keep our heads on straight. And what that really means is recognizing that God is the most, is infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor in our situation. And so our response always is to him as opposed to responding to the situation. We're responding to God to respond to the situation. We're not responding to the situation apart from God. And so we've just got to keep all that in mind. Yep. Well, Nate, this has been awesome, man. It's been kind of nice to recap and debrief and we'll see how the inauguration goes. Who knows how it's going to go. We've had some really crazy things happen. So I think we do need to pray that it is peaceful, that there's no, you know, craziness around assassinations or violence or anything like that. And then I think we just need to be praying for Trump and the whole administration that they would be wise in the way that they handle what they want to do. And that this would not be about brashness or bravado, but this would be about leading a country, you know, well, leading a country that has a lot of good people in it who have a lot of needs and really trying to do your best to meet those needs. So that's my, that's my hope for them. Yes, I think that's good. Yep. We'll be praying for sure. All right. Well, we'll call it a day for this episode. Thanks everybody for sticking with us, not only through this episode, but from some of the other political episodes in the past. I'm going to put some of those links in the show description. So if you wanted to go back and listen to some of our other conversations about politics, Christian nationalism, civil religion, all that kind of fun stuff. You can find a ton of links here in the, in the show notes. And outside of that, we will catch you on the next episode of thinking Christian. Thanks everybody for being here and take care. Relationships, mental health, work, family. Life can feel complicated, but you're not alone. I'm Shanti Feldhahn. And I'm Jeff Feldhahn. On I wish you could hear this. We share simple proven and sometimes surprising secrets from decades of research to help you thrive in life, faith and relationships. Want real stories, real help, real fun and real hope. Listen on lifeaudio.com or follow I wish you could hear this on your favorite podcast app.