How Should Christians Think about Christian Nationalism: Should the Federal Government Advocate Uniquely Christian Values

Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God, so that thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I am joined today by my friend and colleague, Aleem Brandsela, and we are going to talk a little bit about the notion of Christian nationalism, and we're going to continue looking at this neighborly faith survey that came out December 2023. Richard Beatty and I have done a couple episodes, and now Aleem and I are going to have a couple of conversations about these different statements. Just to give a little bit more of a theological context, and I'm hoping a little bit more maybe of an international context to some of these conversations, and really think this through when we think about the church and its relationship to the state, that's obviously going to be different if we're not in the United States. And the United States, I think, actually opens up additional problems for historic doctrines related to church and state. But Aleem, welcome. I'm excited to get into this. How are you doing, man? Great to be back on the podcast, on the hottest podcast, I think, right now on the marketplace. It's great to be with you, James. Very cool. Well, let's dive in, man. You know, this neighborly faith survey, actually, the director of Neighborly Faith is somebody we both know, Chris Dockarock, and so, yeah, we knew him from back in the day when we were at Moody Bible Institute and doing our thing there. So the shout out to Chris. It's really good work. But yeah, so here's what we're doing. The statement that we're going to look at is stated like this. The federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. The federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. And this was a statement that ranked high on Christian nationalist adherence and pretty low on everybody else. So Christian nationalist adherence strongly agreed with this statement, the federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. And so when we look at even nationalist sympathizers, this question just isn't, they don't strongly agree with it, right? We're talking a pretty massive gap difference. It's actually a bar chart, so I can't exactly tell you how much that difference is, but when you just look at the colors on the graph, even if you added in those among nationalist sympathizers who just agree with it or even somewhat agree with it, it pretty much pales in comparison to the number of Christian nationalist adherents that strongly agree that the federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. And so I think there's a, you know, there is a, always the question of, what does it mean to be a Christian nationalist, right? But as we look at these statements, it's, it's sort of like, well, the people who agree with these statements are the Christian nationalists. So Allene, any thoughts initially, like, the federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. I mean, what are your initial thoughts on that statement? This is, this is a complex conversation, even though apparently it seems to be a simple conversation. The simple answer to this, that is, this is a fundamentally wrong view on the federal government's role and also on Christianity. It got both wrong, if you ask me. What is the Christian faith all about and what should be the federal government all about? Now I am going to strongly position myself exactly in my corner where I'm at. I am a first generation immigrant to this great country, and I choose my words very carefully. I am a first generation immigrant to this great country, and it gives me a unique vantage point of seeing, of being an outsider-insider, right? Being able to actually articulate why I believe America is a blessing to the world without actually going straight into American, to the American exceptionalism, which I think fuels a little bit of the American Christian nationalism. And, and it gives me a chance to see, you know, some of the massive blessings that this country has been for the last 250 years on earth, but also to actually raise some question marks. And I'll say, I want to open the conversation. I'm excited to hear your thoughts, especially as a theologian, and I'm not going to position myself there. I am by trade, my specialty is intercultural studies, and that's why I love the ability to look from different perspectives, different angles. But I will say it, it's, it's really deeply concerning to me because my first observation coming to the United States of America is that there's the lines are really blurred between what it means to be an American and what it means to be a Christian. And the lines are really blurred, especially in the last era of presidency between state and church. Yeah. Well, I think that that was the first observation I had, and that's why I'm excited to start the conversation from there. Yeah, I think the blurring of boundaries is really crucial to understand. So even if we think about this, Christian values, right? Just that phrase. I know everybody would want me to say that I understand exactly what that is, right? So I have a PhD in theological studies. I've done, you know, I think I was, my wife always gives me that I was in school for a decade, you know, a little more than that, actually. With my background in education, I should know what Christian values are. And I think I do. The problem is, I don't think that's what this means. And so if we look at something even like Nancy Pearcy, who is an apologist down at Houston Christian University, she wrote a book called Saving Leonardo. And in Saving Leonardo, she points out this dichotomy between facts and values. And facts are the hard, empirical, we can touch, see, replicate, test, you know, really nail down a fact. Values are squishy, right? They are values. Yeah, they're sort of quasi-opinions. They sort of land in the range of personal preferences, you know, and so they could be my values or your values, but they can't be just values as if we think they're facts. Yes. And I think the problem here that I'm having is at least twofold with the notion of Christian values. Number one, it assumes, I think, a separation between fact and value. So let me illustrate that point. There was a study that came out in 2022 from the Trafalgar group, and a lot of individuals, I don't remember the exact percentages, but I think it was in the 70s, believed that the moral lessons of Easter and Passover were necessary for America to secure a strong future going forward. So when I read a statement like that, what I'm thinking to myself is, true, but again, I think we're saying true to the wrong things. What I would say is, it's true that the moral lesson of Easter, if we mean a God who became man, sacrificed himself on the cross, and demonstrated true self-sacrifice that can only be found in him and in union with him through faith, agreed. I don't think that's what we mean by morals. I think what we mean by morals is an abstraction. Let's take the theological content of this and sort of slough it off, and let's keep the ethical principle. And I think that's probably what this is doing. So when we think about Christian values, we're not actually thinking about Christ. We're actually taking Christ and we're putting him somewhere else. And we're saying, what we want to do with these Christian values is we want to tease Christ away from it because obviously not all Americans are going to be Christians, right? And so we want to tease those out and we want to separate the Christ event, right? And by that, I mean his incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, glorification, that whole thing, right? The Christ event. We're going to separate that whole thing out, and we're just going to sort of keep these, like, let's love each other, but we don't need a theological example for how to do that. Let's just do it. Let's have justice, but we don't need God to tell us how to do justice. We'll just do justice. That's what I, that's what I see in here.

That's what I find problematic. I actually agree with you because it does seem to be quite general in the way that this is approached. But I think it has layers and layers, and one of the layers that concern me is that this is coming out of fear. One, it comes out of fear. Another one comes out of a desire for power, which sometimes they're the same, but the lines are blurred. And what do I mean by fear? I'm going to give an example. I was at a family party, and we're having a conversation. And this is a committed Christian in our family, and we're having a conversation. And they made this statement in my presence, which, you know, you're a family gathering. You don't want to have serious conversations. And if you do, you never want to argue with a family member. But if I tell you the statement, it will tell you why I was so moved by this statement that it made me completely break the rules of family parties and say, you know what, we're going at it because this is important. This person said this, and I think it actually is some of the voices that are bubbling up and making a statement like this that we want the federal government to protect us, basically, and to protect what we believe is right and it's true. They said, I am happy that the world power is moving away and the world superpower is moving away from America and the Western world, and it's moving to China, India, and Russia because the LGBTQ took over, and these powers are going to actually control this agenda. And it bothered me to my core because China, even India, but between China and Russia, we have more than 80 million people killed in the human rights and all the things that are happening there to a level that it's just not comprehensible. The last century, the Black Book of History mentions close to 140 million people killed at the hand of communism. And here's a Christian believer that is looking at one particular agenda that the federal government is apparently discussing this very differently and is saying, because they're not protecting my rights as a Christian and they're allowing the conversations to happen and marriage and all these kind of things, I would rather have the center of the power in the world held by the people that have destroyed the most, we're not even talking about Christian faith, we're talking about human rights, the basic human rights. And that had to have come from a position of fear, from a position of, I'm not even going for the fundamentals of the faith for trusting and loving the neighbor, and who is your neighbor? I'm actually going for somebody that has come from a communist country to make that statement. That had to be strong. So I have a feeling that just feeling out of control, the American church is experiencing, maybe for the first time in 250 years, a lack of control, a lack of voice in the marketplace like it used to maybe historically. I'm not a church historian in America, but it's looking like there's a continuity of all kinds of positions of power and influence in the American politics. And now out of that, it's saying, they need to control, they need to actually value me, and they need to fight for me, and my values should actually be the one ruling, and the government should actually fight for me. So I don't know what you think about this. Yeah, so there definitely is a partisanship that I think is taking hold of the church. There is a sense in which we've become an advocacy group for and within the political system, as opposed to what I think is probably more appropriate of taking up a critical stance against political powers more generally. And so, you know, when we're advocating for choosing the best we've got or the worst of two options, the lesser of two evils, I'm not sure we're doing our job. I mean, we're participating in government, yes, absolutely. But I don't think we're actually providing that sort of critical, prophetic voice that reminds people that the government is under God's authority and that it should align with God's order, and that when it exacts justice that goes against what God would have it do, there is likely to be trouble, right? So I don't think we've really mastered that prophetic voice. I think two things about the story you told. Number one, I agree, fear is definitely a component. I think fear and control are definitely a component. I also think that there is a narrative within this that is related to disgust. And so it's difficult for me to, what I would say is like this, usually the way I explain it, we've decided that we should be the arbiters of the sacred and profane. And so what we find disgusting is profane, and what we don't find disgusting is sacred. So individual human rights, sacred. The LGBTQ movement, profane. But what I think what we miss sometimes is that those two are linked. The individual human rights, what we want is not unlimited individual human rights. The transhumanist movement, which I've written a couple pieces on, they talk about this in terms of morphological freedom. I should be able to do whatever it is that I want with my body. I should be able to apply whatever technology is available to my body to do whatever it is that I want to do to enhance myself. And it's radical morphological freedom, right? This is the way they talk about it. Most people, if they're honest, are fine with certain constraints, right? I'm happy not to go 100 in my subdivision when the speed limit is 25. I recognize, even though I would love to go faster and get out of my subdivision faster, I get that going 100 is dangerous, maybe 30 instead of 25, just throwing that out there. But the point is, right, there's a speed limit, and I'm fine with that constraint. Because even if I might be responsible, there will be other people who are gonna be crazy. And so that constraint is, overall, I think a good thing. So we very seldom want sort of human rights without constraint. But our problem is that we want certain constraints. And that's where I think this statement really comes in. In saying Christian values, I don't get the impression that what is intended is everybody should become Christian. What I get the intention is, Christians should be able to set the tone. We should be able to define the constraints. And that, to me, is, in one sense, very American, right? Because, you know, in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we're part of the people. And so, right, I think it's okay for Christians to advocate for things that they want to have out of government, right? If you wanna be pro-life, if you wanna be, you know, those kind of things, I think it's no problem. I think the difficulty for me is when we lean on political structures to institute the sort of morality that really the church in and of itself should be demonstrating. And so there is this sort of weird blurring of lines there that we've gotta get our hands around. It isn't that I think Christians shouldn't participate in politics. Again, I think in a democratic society, participating in politics is an appropriate thing. I also think we should do that with a high degree of humility and a recognition that no matter what it is that we do in politics, it is always provisional. And so this isn't a long-term fix. This is like a short-term move. So before we go further, let me take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll discuss a little bit more about how this sort of plays itself out from a theological perspective. So stay with us, we'll be right back. 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. 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Pyramid 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. Hey everybody, welcome back to Thinking Christian. I'm here with Aline Bransila and we're talking about a statement from the Neighborly Faith report that many people who are designated as adhering to Christian nationalism believe. And that statement is the federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. So Aline, when we got done there, I was kind of waxing philosophical a little bit about this. What are your thoughts? I really, I've heard you speak about this a few times and I actually really love the statement that you've made one time of the fact that we, what are we called to do? What are we called as Christians to do in this world except by being near witnesses of what God is doing? And that faithfulness, that trust that God is at work, you know, I'm not gonna Christianize or theologize about this, but it's, it's, it's fascinating to look at the people of God in Egypt being in a, they started being in originally, they were in a gated community, you know, in the land of Goshen, it was like the most expensive land. They were doing really good. I mean, they were really hot, right? And all of a sudden that gated community, somebody locked the gate, right? And it became that they were enslaved by the Pharaoh. So the, the political situations changed a little bit there. What's missed in that space is that while they were crying for God and they believe that God was nowhere to be found, God was already in the desert talking to Moses. And yet if you look just humanistically speaking, just from their perspective, nothing was happening. They should have taken the issues in their own hands. They should have pleaded with Pharaoh. They should have been like, we were here. We saved you. We all this, look at our ancestors, you know, apply for a assistant Pharaoh position. You know, get into some situations there. But what God was actually not dealing with the gates. He was already in the desert. So, so just being mere witnesses of God's already miraculous, powerful work requires that level of trust, of faithfulness, of understanding where God is. I do think sometimes it's easier to take matters into our own hands, to actually double click and say, the government should do this. This should happen here. You know, we should have civic things and all that. And that is a human response to what I think to be a deeper, deeper issue, a humanity issue. Well, and if you take that Exodus narrative, which I'm really happy you brought up as an Old Testament guy. If you take that Exodus narrative just a chapter back, what you find is that Moses does try to do something human. And so he sees this Egyptian oppressing the Hebrews and he goes, kills the Egyptian, buries him in the sand. And what he finds is that while his impetus may have been right, like you can kind of sort of sympathize with Moses, right? Like you're seeing oppression happen right in front of you. Shouldn't you do something? Well, Moses tries to. And not only does he get chased out of Egypt into the desert of Midian, but when he, when the Hebrews see him, like there's two Hebrews quarreling and he tries to stop and then they say, Whoa, you're going to kill us and bury us in the sand too? Who made you our deliverer, jerk? Like they reject him as well. And so what we find in that narrative, I think, is that there are times, and I don't know that I would, that I would make this like a totalizing statement, but I think one of the things that we don't often reckon with, we don't even try to discern, is when should we be exercising restraint? In that moment, you know, Moses was trying to deliver Egypt himself. He was not attempting to take the glory of God on himself, right? But in effect, that's what would have happened. Yes. Right. Moses saved us. And the reality is, you know, Moses saving the people wouldn't have done much because Moses can't solve food problems. Moses can't solve drought problems. Moses can't, you know, really curtail all the crime. Moses can't change people's hearts. Moses, you know, there's this whole slew of things that Moses can't do. He's basically maybe a nicer Pharaoh. Yes. Right. And so there can be no real transformation. But when God draws the people out of Egypt, now what happens? Well, he gives them the Ten Commandments, and now the people have at least God's wisdom that they can choose to follow or not. Now, ultimately, that isn't going to work either. And so, you know, in the new covenant, what we have is a transformation of the heart through faith in Jesus Christ. And that then solves the problem of the law's weakness to deal with human sin. But I think it's a really important point is to say, if we don't reckon with when we should restrain ourselves, when we just should not participate. Like, we don't ever have to choose the lesser of two evils. No. There's always a third rail for us. And the third rail is to say, I'm not picking either one of these bad choices. I'm going with the third rail and I'm just going to be, I'm just going to trust that God is going to fix things. I'm trusting that God is moving. I'm trusting that God doesn't need my political action right now because I can't separate the bad actions of, you know, especially in political elections. I think this comes up. I can't separate. I won't separate between the bad actions of either one of these candidates. And just because you feel a certain way, and this goes back to that discuss comment I made before the break. Just because you're more disgusted by one thing than another doesn't mean that they're not both disgusting. I don't know that your kids, your kids might not be old enough, but do you ever play the Would You Rather game? No. You know, it's like, it's like, would you rather eat dirt or lick the bottom of a flip flop? You know, and in the context of the game, it's like, yeah, that's an interesting sucker's choice. So choose one and they're both gross and ew, you know, you'd lick the bottom of a flip flop, you know, like that kind of thing. But the reality is we never actually have to pick the sucker's choice. We're never in that situation. And so I think that as we look at this and we and we sit back and think about this statement, federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. You know, we're putting ourselves in the position of control where affiliating Christianity with an imperfect system and suggesting that Christian values will make America great again somehow just has so many flaws. I'm not even sure where to start. For me, there are so many, there's so many angles that we can actually talk about this. One would be, I'm curious how Christians would like to experience living in an Islamic state. Yeah. For two weeks. You know, I know they wouldn't consider a longer tenure. If they made it that long. Sitting, I actually got a chance to to travel and to be for a few months in an Islamic state that actually enforced Sharia law, which means that the laws of the Quran are the laws of the land. And I got a chance to see a site for the first time in my eyes with my eyes. Somebody coming out of a bank with, I would say, millions of pounds of their currency, putting them on the sidewalk and going back into the bank and taking like millions of just their currency and putting it on the sidewalk and going back in the bank. And I'm looking from the car and saying, would that happen in America? With that, could somebody walk out of their ATM? You know, when you go to the ATM in America, you count your money like next to your like chest here. Even like $200 in twenties, right? Because nobody would touch that money because, you know, in the middle of games, in the middle of soccer games, they would have public executions for people that were caught stealing. So people are like, you know, let's not, let's not do that. So it's, but, but then you have a lot of abuse coming from different interpretations of the Quran of different interpretations of this. And God never intended for that to become the marketplace. And that's why for me, I'm going to, so one aspect of that is to think of the alternative and to think of your neighbor and saying, what, what would a Buddhist do in America? What would a Muslim do in America? What would an atheist do in America that only upholds one set of values, even the way you define values. But there's also another aspect that I'm curious. I'm going back to the old Testament. I want to make you happy today. I'm going back to the old Testament. The people of God are asking for a king and they're saying, we want to be like all the other nations. Yeah. And God's response to that is always fascinating to me to say, okay, let's do that. but here's, here's the asterisk. Here's the trade-off. There's a trade-off. They're going to take your sons, your daughters. They're going to, you know, they're going to do all kinds of things to you. And there is a deep trade-off of the, of the fact that you're saying, God, we don't want you to be our president. We would just want to be like all the other nations.

And I'm thinking of what is the trade-off when you're making the government enforce your own changing values that not one denomination can agree on set of values, right? Across the other values. What is the major trade-off, what you say, are the people that are making the statement even calculating or thinking a little bit about the major trade-off that they're doing by establishing one unique set of values, one flavor of Christianity being enforced by a non-Christian arm? Let me, I think it's a great question, and I want to take one more break, and then when we come back, I'll dive into that question. 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. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Before the break, Aline asked, you know, what are the trade-offs of nailing down, you know, a certain set of values, even if we call them Christian values? What is the trade-off of nailing those down and having the government enforce those as opposed to a different set of values? So I think it's really important to understand, to frame this out in a couple of ways. Number one, you know, the government has delegated authority from God, right? We see that in Romans 13. And so because the government has delegated authority from God and they are supposed to, to some degree, reflect the glory of God in the institution of justice and peace, right? And so there's an appropriate way in which the church, who has God's revelation and a fuller understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God, what it means to reflect that image and glorify God, point to and magnify the triune God in all creation within a fallen world. There's an appropriate way for the church to speak into that government, against that government, for that government, for its improvement, for its correction, for its, you name it. Right? We're trying to say to the government, look, remember that your authority is delegated from God. You do not have authority on your own. It's given to you and you're exercising it poorly and here's how. There's an absolutely appropriate way for us to do that. And so what I think we're not saying in this podcast, what we're not saying in this conversation, is that Christians should just set aside government, never talk about it, never think about politics, whatever. There is an appropriate way for us to have that message given to government. Yes. The trouble with the trade-off you're talking about here, Aline, is, I think, twofold. Number one, yes, you're always going to get some sort of arbitrary slippage, right? So life under the judges, like when you referenced the Israelites asking for a king, life under the judges had its problems, right? You know, Samuel's sons, if you look back at 1 Samuel, part of the reason that they're asking for a king is they look at Samuel's sons and go, are those jokers taking over? We'd prefer something else. Thanks. And so Samuel originally says and initially says, They're rejecting me. He tells God, they're rejecting me. And God says, No, no, no. They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me. Give them what they want. And Samuel tells them, Look, you think it was bad under the judges? Just check out what the king's going to do to you. We actually see this when Solomon's son Rehoboam is in charge. The people come to Rehoboam and they say, Your father, Solomon, put a heavy yoke on us. In other words, he made us work hard. He taxed us hard to sort of support this sort of kingly lifestyle. We would like you to take that yoke away. And Rehoboam's like, Give me a few days and I'll let you know. And they come back and Rehoboam's like, I think I'm gonna make it heavier. Right. So the tradeoffs are real, right? And so I think the first problem I have with it is, you know. To think that any change we make in government, any system that we institute, any set of values that we put in place, are going to usher in some sort of a utopia. We're wrong, right? I tend to think of this in terms of, and I think trade-off is absolutely the right word, because when we think of trade-off, what we're really thinking of is, What would I be most comfortable with? What imperfect, sinful in many ways, situation am I going to enjoy most? Now, we wouldn't phrase it like that. But essentially, phrasing it in the positive, right? If only these Christian values would be instituted by the federal government. It suggests something about what that's going to do that I would call utopian. I would call it giving false hope. It's just, it's absolutely sort of a false, odd narrative to think that the state will ever be able to achieve something, even if they instituted every rule that we could find in the Bible perfectly. Right? And part of that is that the, what I would say, one of the first rules in the Bible is, Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Right? And so, are you really going to fear the Lord? I don't think that's a policy we can institute. If that's a relation you have to establish, it's not a policy you put in place. Yes. And so, would it be appropriate in this statement, if we're thinking about the trade-off, would I feel differently about it if it said, Christian individuals should advocate for morality that is largely aligned with God's order as we understand it from Scripture. Overly complicated statement, I realize, but I would be far more comfortable with that. Right? Yes. But the trade-off here is, yeah, I think the trade-off really in this instance, or the first part of the trade-off is, we become complacent and comfortable with a sinful situation that we find relatively enjoyable, relatively comfortable, and relatively moral. The way I usually like to phrase it is, we settle for wholesomeness when only holiness will do. The second trade-off is this. This statement says the federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. I find that a little insane because it isn't now talking about the church as an institution or entity. It's talking about the federal government as an entity. Again, if this were Christian individuals should advocate uniquely Christian values, I'd still have the Christian values question, but it would tie into the way our system of government actually works. As individual Christians, right, we have voice in government because that's the way the government is structured in America. Yes. And so, do I think that Christians should be advocating for abortion, let's say? No, probably not. It seems like a bad idea, right? Like, it doesn't seem commensurate with who we are and what our values are. And so I have no problem with Christians going out and advocating against abortion. But this statement is about the federal government. Yes. Yes. And I would say that the federal government isn't really much of anything. The federal government is the institution of representatives who are supposed to represent the people. And so the people should be doing this, and the federal government should be passing laws that represent what the people are asking for. And so I have issue with this whole statement simply because the church is completely left out of it. Like, the church no longer has a voice. What we're really doing is we're lobbying the federal government to make society better as opposed to...

Being better ourselves and demonstrating what it means to point to and glorify the triune God. So that's my, that's my response. And that's exactly, I think, what I was asking. I think there's a lot of trade-off. You know, I think it's still a little too early to talk about the pandemic. We might need another 5 to 10 years for us to actually go back and learn some lessons from that. I don't think people are ready to learn from it. Yeah. I actually really feel like people, you don't hear in the sermons, it's very, you don't hear in too much, like, you know, it's kind of, you know what, let's just completely forget about that. Yeah. There is one lesson that is never too early to learn from it. And the fact that it was easy for me to witness how very quickly the church was labeled as non-essential because it was closed down. And the government is the one leading the people and taking care of the people through the worst pandemic in our modern era. I do think that the role of the government has changed in people's minds and now occupies a little bit more than they're comfortable admitting in America. Now, I come from a place where the government was everything and I come to the United States of America because I love me a small government. I love for the government to take care of the roads, the infrastructure, the military, you know, some of the things, the economy, you know, all this. I don't like a government that buys a lot of individual homes. I don't like that. I don't like a government that is involved in all kinds of things because, and the only thing that I like about America is that the people still have a say because even though the rest of the world loses its mind when you think about this, people still have guns. And, you know, at the end of the day, I know somebody in a certain state, I'm not going to say which one, the tagline of the state is friendship, but it's the state of Texas. So that should tell you, you know, that's the first. And they have more ammunition. This person themselves can invade Moldova. Okay. They have 50,000 rounds of ammunition at home. But they do that because a government in which the people can just, you know, roll over, they can take over and the government can become everything and really decide. This is one thing that a lot of people in America don't understand. I come from Romania. Romania is a former communist country. You know what the government decided in Romania? The length of people's hair. You were not allowed to have long hair. That was a sign of Western values. And because of that, the government said, if you had long hair, there was like an unmarked van that would pull right next to you. They would pick you up. And I can tell you by the time you got home, your hair was very different. It was not styled. It was just buzzed. Right? The government decided exactly the length of hair. Now, we wouldn't want a government to do that. Right? But I'm thinking that there's no limit to what a government will do if you give it that much of authority. Right? Because we've seen examples. This is one thing that I do want to raise a huge question in America is I know one thing we learned from history is that we don't learn from history, Warren Buffett said. Right? But we can still learn from the other countries. Hey, how was it in communism? Like, did you get a chance to wear the hair how you wanted to? And people were like, no. They made a decision that nobody is allowed to ride with the left hand. The government made a decision that left-hand people are not allowed to, like, be in school. So all these things, those are the kind of decisions. So there is a significant, there is a significant trade-off. But I do think it speaks to something maybe even deeper. I want to take a poke at it really quick. The book of Colossians is the only book that Apostle Paul wrote to a church that he didn't plant. And he wrote it, my understanding is, because of the Colossian heresy. And he was really intrigued by Colossian heresy. And the Colossian heresy, to my knowledge, some scholars agree with this, that it was tied to the insufficiency of Christ. Colossian said, you know, Jesus is cool, it's fun, but it's not enough. You need to have some judaic traditions. You need to have some philosophy. You need to have some gnosticism. You need to have some things to really complement to what Jesus can offer. And to that, Apostle Paul says, Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. And he makes the statement over there to say, all the fullness of God lives in Jesus. That's right. What are we saying when we're saying that we want the government to actually promote, protect, you know, shape, and enforce the values, the unique Christian values? Are we not somewhat connecting that to the insufficiency of who Jesus is in our lives? Yeah, I think there's that. I agree 100%. I think that's part of what's happening. I think that the political realm is taking on a messianic tone. And that there's this lament about the loss of Christian heritage or Christian values in America. And, you know, we were founded as a Christian nation. And, you know, that whole narrative goes down. And so America itself, sort of the spirit of America, becomes almost holy in a sense. And in that sense, I think there is a gesturing toward the insufficiency of Christ. I think that insufficiency then, what it tends to do, is relegate Christ to the religious realm only. And so what we really want is we want Jesus to stay in the church and we'll allow anyone who wants to worship to worship. But ultimately, what we really want is we want a society that is built to look like the kingdom of God that we run. And so what I see in all of the sort of Christian nationalism, the hard Christian nationalism is what I'll call it. And what I mean by that is, I think there is a soft version of this that says Christians should participate in government. And I don't really have any problem with that sort of soft form of Christian nationalism. You know, it'd be like, you know, saying Christians should be in the workplace. Sure. Right. You know. But I think the harder form of Christian nationalism that says, look, end of the day, Christians should just run things. And if Christians ran things, we'd have this amazing country and America would be built to last and it would be a perpetual nation and it would fulfill its covenant with God. And all those kind of American exceptionalism, American messianism, all those kind of things. I think it's such a fallacy because at the end of the day, the kingdom of God is not going to be ushered in on our effort. It's going to be ushered in by our faithfulness, maybe. Right. I think that we anticipate the kingdom of God by obeying all that Christ commanded, by imitating him and doing what he did. But my goodness, we serve a you know, a crucified savior. Jesus is pictured as a slaughtered lamb, you know, in the book of Revelation. He comes back to conquer, but that's him. It's not us. Right. And so a lot of these things where we are trying to play in the halls of power in order to sort of usher in some sort of utopia or when we use that kind of language, I think we are collapsing the distinction between the church and the state and opening up the potential, as you say, to commit the Colossian heresy of denigrating the sufficiency of Christ. Yes. And I do think this statement is getting to that point. And, you know, again, I have much more sympathy. You know, if I were to rate my agreement with this statement, the federal government should advocate uniquely Christian values. I might have done a strongly disagree. Right. But I bet I'd be more like neither agree or disagree. Because I I want the nuance of it. Right. And intuitively, I'm thinking the survey doesn't want me to have that nuance. When you read the statement, you're like, well, is there a way I could agree with it? Yeah, there probably is a way I could agree with it. And so if I tease that out, then then I would. But as it's written, I really don't. And so where do I where do I fall on that? Right. But at the end of the day, do I want the federal government and do I even think the federal government could, you know, institute a set of Christian values? I don't think they can. And it's partly because, as we talked about earlier, Christian values, they have to be linked to Christ. I mean, it'd be like saying Christian doctrine and not meaning the Trinity or the incarnation or whatever. Like, it's not like we can just abstract principles out of all of this and go, that's what we meant by Christian values. And never, ever mentioned Christ. And so I think the Colossian situation you're bringing up is kind of perfect. And we'll probably close it up right there. But I think overall, what we've surfaced are a few different things. So I'll try to sum it up. And then if you have anything to add, add to it. Number one, having the federal government do this seems problematic. It opens us up to, I think, an overreach in governmental authority where they are now going to institute Christian values sort of almost for the church. So if we understand Christian values as anything, we want the federal government just to enforce those and then maybe the church can do its job. I find that to

within society. You know, we don't want people acting Christian until they realize they're not Christian. We just want them to recognize that they're fallen, recognize they need to see Jesus, be transformed. And that's what the church does. That's that's our gig, right? Yes, yes. The second thing I really think we've surfaced here is the way this statement does relegate Christ to the side. It makes him less than sufficient to do what needs to be done. Yes. And I think that part of that heresy, just to add a little bit to it, is when we assume that Christ is insufficient, what we're really saying is Jesus isn't doing what we think he should do. In other words, he's not addressing the problems of the world on our terms. But overall, if we look at it and we say, no, no, he's not supposed to be addressing it on our terms. Our terms are what get us into these messes. Yes. He should be addressing it on his terms and we should be following him. So he is sufficient, but he's not going to solve this near-term problem exactly how we think he should. Right. And so he's sufficient. Yes. As he was not consumed with the Roman Empire when he was on earth, the largest government right next to Bethlehem. Right. And he was like, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. I'm done. Resolved. That's right. Yeah. Let's just be done with it. And so, yeah. And then I think also we have that problem with Christian values. What are they? Do we really understand what we're saying when we say that? And can we even disconnect the fact, the reality of Jesus Christ, the reality of God, the reality of the Holy Spirit? Can we really detach those realities from a set of values and like pull those apart and abstract them? So those are the points I think we've covered today. Anything else to add, man? Because what Jesus valued was non-Christians. That's right. That's right. He ate with them. Yeah. Drank with them. Right. Hung up with them. I mean, it's funny. You look at, what is it? I'm trying to remember what passage it is. I think it's Matthew maybe 7. I wouldn't quote me on that, but maybe Matthew 7. Where Jesus confronts the Pharisees who they come up to him and they say, well, why do your disciples eat before washing their hands? And that goes against the tradition of the elders. And Jesus comes back and he says, you're elevating the tradition of the elders over the commands of God. And his whole point is that the commands of God matter. The traditions of men don't. And so it really does feel like Christian values in this statement may sort of be traditions of men in some sense. Yes. Yes. For our generation, for right now, but they are supreme. That's right. Yeah. But also for everybody else. For everybody else. Yeah. Well, man, I'm excited. I'm glad to have you here for this one. I'm looking forward to digging into another one here in the next episode. And so we'll be back next time on Thinking Christian. We're going to be talking about another one of these statements. We're going to actually look at whether or not the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation. And again, just kind of going at it from a theological angle and trying to help Christians contextualize these statements within a biblical and theological framework. So thanks only for being here. And thanks everybody else for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Through calm, thoughtful, theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. I want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. Life Audio. Hi, I'm Rachel Adams, host of The Love Offering Podcast, where we explore how to live out the greatest commandment to love God, love others, and even love ourselves. Each week, my guests and I share stories of how God's love transforms us and overflows into the lives of those around us. Whether through small acts of kindness or powerful moments of faith, we're learning how to make love our greatest offering. Tune into The Love Offering Podcast available on lifeaudio.com and all podcast platforms.