Practicing Civility after the Election

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody, this is Dr. James Spencer, and I am joined today by Nate. And we're going to be discussing something that we've seen come about after the election. We're recording this after the election. And part of what we've been seeing is just a general lack of civility, maybe we could call it. But I think more than that is, I think, telling signs that we don't really understand what we're dealing with, that we are leaning way too heavily on the government to solve our problems and that what we really need is some clarity and some understanding about how we as Christians, but also just we as U.S. citizens can actually operate. So that's what we're going to be talking about a little bit today. Nate, welcome, man. It's good to have you back on the podcast and I appreciate you being here. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to talk about this just because we all kind of had this contention leading up to the election, like, ah, it's going to go one way or another. And then I think either way people are going to be upset. I think the biggest thing is now that we have, just like we have in the past, what we have left, like what we're going to deal with, how do we move forward with our friends, with our neighbors, family members? I've heard many conversations just in the last two weeks and seen a ton of stuff online. And it's just sad that people put so much weight in that. And it's like, you knew people way before these politicians even existed, especially if it's family. So let's not get ahead of ourselves and make a decision that we're going to regret later based on how we feel now. It's kind of how I think about it. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think, you know, there's some baseline things that we could talk about, you know, as Christians. We are not attempting to offend people with our political views. Unless by political views, we mean proclaiming Jesus is Lord. And so we want the gospel to be offensive, but we don't actually ourselves necessarily want to be offensive. And so we've got to watch that and think through that and be careful how we navigate some of these things. That would sort of be a baseline, I think, concern for us. But I think the other side of it is, you know, my concern is, and you and I were talking earlier about, you know, some of these businesses that are moving out of different places because they don't want to be in a red state. We've seen a mass exodus of quote-unquote red state people from California and those kind of things. Some of that's justifiable. I don't want to necessarily say that people moving out of an area because they are, you know, they're Republican and they don't want to live in a Democratic area or vice versa, is totally out of bounds. But, you know, as someone who has lived in Illinois all of my life, there was only a short stint where I actually lived in Missouri. And I don't think I was ever there long enough to be a Missouri resident. You know, I've been in a Democratic state most of my life. And I would just say that it doesn't, you know, it's never really bothered me. I, you know, I lived, yes, now I live in central Illinois. It is a little bit more red down here. But I was in Chicago for, in Chicagoland area for probably the last 12 years. I never noticed. You didn't notice the difference. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, at the end of the day, people are certainly people have their political convictions. But there's a sense in which if you're just open and honest about other people's perspectives and trying to understand as opposed to force your views on someone else, I think that we can still have considerable civil conversation. Now, that doesn't apply to everyone. I've had my fair share of people just sort of dismiss me because I'm Christian or because I'm white or because I'm male or some combination of those three. You throw heterosexual in there, I suppose. But, you know, like you have those moments. But I wouldn't say that those were ever definitive in my experience. Even in somewhere as, you know, quote unquote liberal as Chicago. Absolutely. Yeah, I've seen a number of people, like literally, it's like the switch flipped the next day at post-election on Wednesday or whatever it was on Facebook. I've always, because of escape ministry, I've always had probably more people that don't really have a relationship with Jesus. 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. On my timeline or like just in my friend group on Facebook or Instagram or what have you. And I was astounded actually this time around at how many people posted stuff like, I'm going to quote here or, you know, kind of generically say, but generally like the idea of like, well, if you voted for Trump, go ahead and let me now. So let me know so I can go ahead and just get you off of my friend list. And I'm like, man, that's a big decision. Like you're taking someone out of your life just from that. And then a lot of people I feel like just don't even talk about whether they did or not. I think people assumed both ways for me. But first and foremost, even with Christians, I just, I think, like we talked about in past episodes, we should be focusing about our relationship with Jesus first, not letting the other ones lead. And I feel like that's an issue that I've seen, especially this time around. Like people just want to draw a line in the sand really quickly. And I'm like, hold on, we don't have to do that just yet. Like we can not see eye to eye on everything, but still not throw everything 12, 15, 20 years of friendship, relationship away over something like that. So, yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, I think that people would assume probably where I live, where I grew up, and just based on my faith, that I voted one way or another. When I've been asked that in public settings, I usually default to saying, I think voting and or not voting is a private matter. I just, I think I grew up in a time where this was not anywhere near as public as it is now. There would be some people who had, you know, signs in the yard. They're obviously supporting one candidate or another. And you still have that. But now it seems like we've decided to define ourselves based on who we're voting for. And I, you know, I've talked about this on past episodes, Nate, but voting is an inherently ambiguous decision. What we've done to it, we've said this inherently ambiguous decision is now going to be definitive of who you are and what you stand for. And there's a there's a symbology that has arisen around it that says if you voted for Trump, you believe these things. If you voted for Kamala Harris, you believe these things. And I'm not sure that's actually the case. And so my inclination has always been just to say, yeah, I appreciate the question of who I voted for. I can understand why you're asking it. I hope you can appreciate that I'm never going to answer. I just don't talk about it. I don't. I don't feel like it's anybody else's business but my own. Right. And so, you know, my wife and I do have political conversations. We talk to our kids about different things. But honestly, we've really tried to be sort of what we've what we've talked about as a Christian first family. And so our primary conversations are they may start with politics, but they always end with Christ. Right. And so I think there's a there's a sense in which this is where I'm concerned that we're putting way too much weight on the political realm. And in doing so, we're we're pushing toward a particular set of actions that I'm not sure we fully comprehend or understand. Right. Yeah, I would add to that, too, this time you mentioned the yard signs. I've never put a yard sign in my house, like unless it was like for something, some project or nonprofit or something that I'm creating awareness for. This year, Life 885, the local radio station here that I work with part time on the weekends, had these yard signs. It says my hope and faith is in Jesus. And, you know, I think people that have asked me that are close enough at whether it's in my DMs or in person. I was just in Nashville last week and I had a few conversations with people that I really love.

I love and respect and have a lot of appreciation for. I think people are surprised when they find out that, like, I didn't agree like they thought I did, or that I wasn't thinking the way that I thought I did. What we can agree on, though, is during all this, before, during, and now after, my hope and faith still remains in Jesus. And I relate to what you just said about family. I really only talk about it with my wife and my kids, but I always try to bring it back at the end to that because I think that's something that's not going to change. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever, as we've seen during this whole political campaign. Politicians' views, things on different matters or subjects can change. Sometimes in a matter of weeks, it could be one way and then the next week it's another. We don't get that with Christ, and so I'd rather put my hope and faith in that. Now, pay attention to it, yes, but I think people were surprised when they found out how I really felt about it. But I really don't talk about it with many people either. I tend to agree with what you said and kind of approach this that way. Yeah, so there's, I think, a problem that we're having in the United States right now, and the problem is one of... 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. collapsing a lot of different things onto the government. We've had a number of episodes related to Christian nationalism, where what I would argue is part of what's happening with Christian nationalism is everybody is now recognizing the dangers of liberalism. We're recognizing the dangers of a government that is founded of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that danger is that as the people change, the underlying values, interests, ambitions, ideologies of that people are going to change with it, and the government, as designed, and I would emphasize that, the government as designed, needs to adapt. The United States government wasn't designed as a Christian regime. It was designed within a context in which the vast majority of citizens were sympathetic to or committed to a Christian perspective. And so that worked. Now what we're struggling with, I think, is we're struggling with a government that is built to be of the people, by the people, and for the people when the people don't agree. There's a number of different perspectives and viewpoints out there, none of which are necessarily totally out of whack with one another, right? But there are differences, and they're real differences. And so how do we deal with those differences? What we have tended to do is say, well, when we have a civil disagreement and that raises to a certain level, then the government needs to get involved. And when the government gets involved, the government passes laws or sets policy or starts enforcing differently. There's a number of, and a fairly limited number of things the government can actually do in order to solve a tension that raises up within a community. And I just think that maybe right now what's happening is we have this sort of clash of perspectives. There's a lot of people in America right now that don't agree with one another. I'm leery of allowing the government to solve that problem. Yes, elections are to some degree the voice of the people speaking about what they want the government to do and be. But I think even as we've seen with some of the democratic policies that were put in place over the last four years, some of the, and I wouldn't even say policies, some of the messages that were put out by the democratic party over the last four years, probably what we're seeing is a misreading of what the American people actually were looking for. I think most Americans want sanity. I sort of have to believe that. Right, and peace. Right, that even if we don't fully agree on what the common good is, I think that most reasonable people will agree on reasonable policies, even if they have some minor disagreements. But, you know, what we're seeing from the democratic party was a shift away on some of those things and sort of an insanity in policy. Now in saying that, I'm not revealing my redness in some way, shape, or form, because I think that the Republicans could make the exact same mistake. I mean, I realize there's reason for people on the right to celebrate that they won the House, the Senate, and the White House. But the reality is that also opens them up to a great deal of hubris because they can walk in and say, well, what the American people want are these draconian policies that are more restrictive, that are hammering out, you know, some of these aberrant views that nobody agrees with and nobody wants. That sort of language, that hyperbolic, exaggerated language, I think will get the Republican Party in the same sort of trouble, not the same sort of policies, but the same sort of trouble that the Democratic rhetoric got them in. And so I just, you know, sort of from my perspective, what I see is I see a necessity, a need for there to be, number one, a more robust conversation happening on the civil level, not the government level, but the civil level, between actual citizens talking about and hammering out some of these policies, right? I think particularly on the Christian side, what we can say is, you know, we can express our convictions and be dissatisfied with some of the policies that are passed without necessarily suggesting that those policies are perversions of justice. Mm-hmm. No, that's good. So let me give a biblical example for those of you who would doubt that. Right. Matthew 19, the Pharisees come and they're challenging Jesus on divorce. And Jesus says, you know, in the beginning, here's the way it was. A man was to, you know, be in union with this wife, and they would become one flesh. And that was a, you know, what God has put together, no man should pull asunder. 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. Right, it was intended to be man-woman forever. No remainder. And then the Pharisees come back and they say, ha-ha, we finally got Jesus. So if that's the case, then why did Moses tell us that we could give a certificate of divorce? And what does Jesus say? He says, well, it's because of the hardness of your heart that Moses did that. In other words, we aren't living in an ideal world. And so while it was not so in the beginning, which Jesus goes on again to say, while it was not so in the beginning, these provisions have been put in place because of the hardness of the human heart. And they're there to govern so that our worst instincts and desires don't end up taking over. Right. They're provisional mechanisms. They're not the end-all, be-all. They're not like, oh, great, we live in a society where everyone can divorce for any reason. They still had.

Constraint and constraint to them. But this was by no means anything other than a recognition that the world is broken and requires some level of management. And so as Christians, when we're looking at some of these policies, I think it's great for us to assert and proclaim the ideal. We can lament that we wish some of these things weren't happening. But the reality has to set in at some point that the law is never going to constrain the hardness of the human heart. It can't stop us from doing bad things. Human nature, yep. So I think that little piece there in Matthew 19 is really crucial for us to think through as we think about government. Government is essentially the institution of laws to manage a broken society, to keep things in line. And it is an expression of our values. And so it's absolutely appropriate for us to participate in the processes that come up with those laws and set those policies. But at the same time, we need to recognize that we're not instituting, well, I'll say it like this. Even if we were instituting God's law, there would still be provision for brokenness within that law. And I mean that's sort of a, as I studied that a little bit more, we've been going through this political season and thinking about the relationship between government and Christianity. Matthew 19 was actually really crucial for me because I kind of just sat back in my chair and said, Oh man, this is part of God's law. God's law is not demanding what it was in the beginning. It's not demanding the ideal. It's managing the brokenness at certain points. Right? And that's because we've got to be fully redeemed, fully restored, fully changed in order to realize the ideal. The law can't do it. And so it isn't that the law is just compromising with us. Right? It is still pushing us forward. I mean, it's hard to get around Leviticus 19, you know, be holy as I am holy. Right? That's a, that's a big ask. Right? That's a huge demand. But at the same time, it is also making provision for the unfortunate things that will happen along the way that are either of our doing or simply occur as part of the difficulties we face in a fallen world. Yeah. I think it's just important to lead with love. And I think, gosh, 10 years ago is a totally different landscape than now because social media, if this younger generation, like, you know, navigating this this time with my kids and my son was able to vote for the first time and just talking with him about that the last few months, I can't help but think how many people are uneducated, ill-informed or just don't know. And they tend to just rely on or lean on some, they see people on social media and they just blindly, you know, follow something or choose something because it's popular or because it's trending. Like, I think it's a scary place for politics to become trending because people don't actually do research for themselves. And then you wonder why people don't want to talk about it and they're afraid of, they have to tiptoe in different circles of their life. They have to navigate it cautiously because you don't want to say the wrong thing. You don't want to offend. People are more worried about that than the stuff we should be worrying about. So. Well, and I think social media does something else to us. What I would say is social media is the biggest problem with social media is that it creates verticals. In marketing, you know, you always used to talk about a vertical, right? I'm not part of, for instance, the Tesla vertical, right? I'll never, unless that's the only thing available, I'll never buy an electric car. I'm just not that guy, right? I mean, I own a, you know, an old Jeep, right? It's a manual transmission. I love that thing. That's my, that's what I prefer to drive, right? And so you could catch me in the Jeep vertical all day, but I don't care how many advertisements I see for a Tesla. That's probably not going to be me. I'm just not part of that vertical. Right. And so when we think about social media, we have to think about verticals. And so like when you and I have these conversations, right? If you think back, Nate, we're both old enough to remember the nightly news, right? So if we're both watching the news at six o'clock, even if we're watching on different channels, there's a high degree of likelihood that we're seeing basically the same stories, yes? Yeah, just different people seeing it. Right. You have no idea what my YouTube feed looks like. I have no idea what yours looks like. You don't know what's on my YouTube feed, right? There's probably 15 videos on my YouTube feed that you've never even seen come up in yours. Right. And vice versa. Sure. Right. We're just that, you know, we're, we have, we're going to have different search habits. We're going to, we're going to watch different videos. We're going to watch them for different lengths of time, you know? And so we're going to get different things pull up on our YouTube feeds. So where before we had a mass coordinating mechanism. Now what we have are vertically coordinating mechanisms. If you're a part of my vertical, we all know the same things. If you're not part of my vertical, you're going to know a lot of things and have a completely different perspective on reality than I do. Yeah. It's one of the huge problems of social media. And, and it creates then not only a, I think most people think of it in terms of like, we could think about in terms of gangs, right? You know, where we have these sort of warring factions, but I don't think that's actually how it works. What I would argue is that as we're watching our own YouTube feeds, we begin to value different things. We begin to see the world in different ways. And as we do that more and more and get deeper and deeper into those verticals. Now what I care about and what you care about could end up being drastically different. And, and we wouldn't really necessarily know why. But part of it, and I would say only part of it, has to do with the fact that you've seen information that I haven't seen. You know, things I don't know and vice versa. And so what does that do for our conversations? Right? Because we really started this out, like, how do we, how do we have a little bit more of a civil conversation about these things? But we have to be curious. We can't just be assertive. Right? Here's the way the world looks and this is the only way the world looks because I've seen this information and this is it. No, I've seen the information I've seen, but there's a vast world of information out there. So what have you seen? Like, talk to me about what you've seen and how you think about it and why you care about it and what values it cultivates in you. Like, why do you think that about that? Right. How did you come to that perspective? Like, we've got to get curious again. Because what's happening to us right now is we are being artificially separated from one another based on algorithms. 100%, man. I was just going to say that. And this year, you know, I've talked to you offline and I think we've talked about it a great deal in past episodes. I made a point this year to be, like, in the middle and I'm, like, just going to view and watch both sides. So I watched the RNC. I watched the DNC. But I also tried to just see anything and everything out there I could. I tried to, like, hijack the algorithm a little bit. And it is actually tough to do because you know how it is. You watch one video and they show you five or six afterwards that are along the same line of thinking, line of questioning, all those sorts of things. So then I started, like, you know, just kind of curiously, like, talking with people that I knew who maybe viewed things differently than me. And then I would be, like, swapping things on Instagram with them. And I'm like, oh, interesting, because I've seen something like this, but totally spun the other way. And it's like that's all my feed was showing me. I think it does its best guess of, like, what it thinks you want to see. And then once you spend any amount of time watching that, it just keeps sending it to you. So I've seen a great deal with that. And it's actually kind of mind-boggling.

Like just the technology and the science behind it. Because people, I think when they see that stuff over and over again, they can start to think that line of thinking is the only one. Or that that's the one that's accurate because it's mostly what they're indoctrinating themselves with each and every day, you know? You doomscroll and so at a certain point, I had to just shut it all off and I'm like, I need to take a break because it can be very cumbersome and very, it could be too much. So, but yeah, I've seen that. It is crazy because I think people a lot of times don't see both sides of it. They don't see the different perspectives and so I think there's a lot to say about that. And it makes me worried about it because it was much simpler when we were kids without social media, even 20 years ago before social media and before the internet. Like you had to actually be curious, like you said, I like what you said. We've lost our curiosity. Yeah, and the other thing I would say is, you know, just so we don't come off as like bashing social media. Yeah. But what I would say is I do think that the internet provided a necessary corrective. There were a lot of voices that we weren't hearing that maybe we needed to hear. Right. When we were in, you know, when we were growing up, right? Being limited just in the nightly news had its limitations. And so the internet opened up new worlds for that. But I think now what we've got is, we've got an infinite amount of information that we could consume and a finite capacity to actually consume that information. And so what we're defaulting to is something that is simple and unnuanced. We're deciding, you know, we're creating white-headed good guys and black-headed bad guys. And the world just isn't that. And so, yeah, I think as we as we sort of move out of this election, which was understandably contentious, I think one of the most powerful things Christians can do is to exercise what I've referred to as the negative task of theology. In other words, we need to not just, if we were for Trump, we need not just celebrate Trump. Right? I know there were a lot of Christians who were for Trump. I get that. And so, fine, celebrate a little bit. But also recognize that that celebration has to be deeply, deeply qualified. In the sense that he is going to do things and say things and move in different directions that we won't agree with. And we need to be just as quick to critique him as we are to support him. And I would say the same thing, you know, Biden. I don't really care whether it's a Republican or a Democrat in the White House. We need to be just as quick to recognize the good as we are to critique the bad. Because at the end of the day, Christians are not for one political party or the other. We are for truth. We are for reality, is the way I kind of like to say it. Truth gets a little iffy, right? And I don't mean that in sort of a relativistic, you know, postmodern way. But the reality is that, you know, many times now when we talk about truth, we're really talking about a perspective on truth. And so, we're for reality. Right? We always want to be gesturing toward reality. And so, what's good is just good. It's not a complete good. It's not the whole enchilada of good. It's still good. And what's bad, it may not be, you know, the worst thing to ever happen on the planet, but it's still bad. And we need to be real about those things. We need to give that reality check that is part of, I think, the church's role. And in doing so, I think what we'll end up doing is at least represent that we aren't for a particular candidate. We're for reality. Yeah. One of the conversations I had in Nashville with someone that's very dear to me, you know, I was like, well, you're probably surprised about that because we were actually kind of, it was one of those, I was talking about, we were kind of talking about more specifics and I think they were kind of surprised. And I said, you know what though, even if we didn't agree on one thing or the other, I still love you regardless. I love you even if you did something I don't agree with because it's not my place. I'm not here to judge each individual. I'm here to love people and point people to Jesus. And I'm not tied to one side or the other, like you were saying. And I really liked the way you put that or the reality because, you know, something shifts as you get older too and you start thinking about the world and where it is for your kids. Because reality is someday I'm not going to be here to guide them, to direct them and help them. So I do care more about it than I did when I was 21 years old, 20 years old, whatever. And so I'm kind of torn both ways. Like I do care and I try to pay attention to it. But at the end of the day, like I don't want to worry and stress over it. I just want to give it to God and point people to him. But I want people to know, even if we don't agree on something big, a big issue, like I'm going to love you anyway. Like regardless, you'll never see me drawing a line in the sand and be like, well, you don't think like me, so peace. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think that's actually really crucial because what we're always trying to do is point people not just toward the good, not just away from the evil, but toward the triune God. I mean, I think this lies at the heart of what Paul is talking about when he says, I attempt to be all things to all people that I might save some. He's not compromising his beliefs. He's not saying, you know, I will tell literally anybody anything just so long as they say they're following Jesus. Right. That becomes completely self-determined. It becomes completely human determined. Paul is well aware of the boundaries of what it means to be Christian. Right. So he's not compromising on theological beliefs. But I do think he's avoiding and adapting to these conversations in ways that it's like, yeah, yeah, I mean, I may not fully agree with that, but at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with the perspective. There's nothing bad about it. It's incomplete. It's lacking understanding. But the only way to fix that is not through argument, it's through salvation. Right. And so I think we have to, as Christians particularly, we have to be thinking through that. How is it that we not have, we should have civil conversations with people to the extent that they allow us to. Right. You know, we should keep the peace so long as it is within our power. Right. Pretty sure I've read that somewhere. Yeah. And but it has to go beyond just being civil because we're not interested simply in keeping the peace. We're also interested in advancing people toward and drawing them closer into the gospel, drawing them closer to Christ. And this is where I think our language and our demeanor in these settings is actually really important because at the end of the day, part of the problem we're facing is that people are, how would I put it? There's a way to celebrate too loudly. And once we've celebrated too loudly, let's say, let's say we voted for Trump. I don't know who you voted for. You don't know who I voted for, but let's just say we voted for Trump this election and we won. And so we're out carrying banners. We're out, you know, laughing at the people who voted for Kamala Harris. We're out, you know, saying that the Democrats are crazy. They're trying to justify the loss or whatever they're doing. Right. Almost everything you see in the news media right now. Right. You know, Democrats are crumbling and they're going crazy, whatever. Right. Instead of doing that, which I think signals that we where our real loyalties lie. Like we really needed this guy in for us to feel like we won. No. Or to save us, as I saw. Right. Right. That's not, that's not where, that's not my soteriology. That's not what I, that's not my eschatology. Trump doesn't really factor into my eschatology. Christ does. And so at the end of the day, yeah, we can be happy that our candidate won. We can feel like that's better for the country. We could feel like that's going to make our democracy healthier rather than sicker. However you want to phrase that. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. People may disagree with it. Right. But at the end of the day, it's not bad for us to want our country to be healthier rather than sicker. That's fine. The problem I have is that when we are so happy about it, when we feel it becomes to feel like this was the crux of the issue, that if we don't have this, we have nothing. That's the part where I feel like we've lost our anchor and our anchor really is Christ. He's the one we should be tethered to. He's the one that is, is keeping us stable. He is the foundation on which we're to build. And so, you know, at the end of the day, if, if Kamala Harris had won,

I don't know that I have a lot of indigestion about that. When Trump won, I don't have a lot of indigestion about that. What I see is, and to just be completely transparent, some of the things that I see him doing, I think, are a little bit draconian, and I would prefer he not do them. Right. I think that this notion of eliminating certain departments and amassing greater authority within the executive branch have their issues. I think it's missing the basic philosophy of a liberal democracy, and so, as an American, I would have a lot of dis-ease about that. Now, that doesn't mean I don't have dis-ease on the other side. It's just to say, like, I think this is a wrong move. But at the end of the day, America is going to do what America is going to do. Right. And I don't anticipate it being around forever. So, yeah, let's fight to preserve it. Let's do what we can to keep it stable. Let's encourage our leaders. Let's pray for our leaders. Let's critique our leaders. But let's not have any delusions that America is going to stick around if we're just sufficiently moral to keep it around. Like, that's not how this works. 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. Right. So, yeah, my two cents on it, Nate, is, for Christians who are dealing with unbelievers, right, we need to really focus in and recognize that the basic thing that they're getting wrong is the one thing they just don't know. They don't know that Jesus is Lord. And if they don't know Jesus is Lord, they're going to continue, no matter how far they advance, how moral of people they are, how great they are as people, they're lost. They're still lost. They may be less lost than other people, but less lost is still lost. And the peace that they're trying to chase down, they're not going to find it anywhere else. They're not going to find it anywhere else. They're wasting the effort. Yeah, I've tried, man. Like, nothing has given me peace, even in this. Like, there was times where I saw people with so much at odds around me and it just felt like, in my lifetime, the most civil unrest, just, like, diversity, like people just at odds at each other's throats. Christians walking around, non-Christians walk around, both feeling like they have to be chameleons in different circles and settings because nobody wants to offend anybody. Nobody wants to say the wrong thing. And I just never seen it like this so much, but I think what you said is so true. Our anchor and our center has got to be Christ because he's the only one that was the way he was before, now, and the future. We can't say that about anything else that's tied to a human being because we're just not. I don't care if the person you look up to and love and, like, respect the most, they could still mess up. They could still screw up down the road, like, because we all do. We all will. It is just proven fact. The only piece, the only thing you could bank on and count on is Jesus. So, for me and my family, for me and my house, I have to make sure that every conversation we have, even if it gets muddy at times, it always comes back to that. Yeah. And I think that's sort of a good place to close it up on because what I would say is, we correct this problem not by eliminating social media or stopping watching YouTube or getting off, you know, whatever. I mean, those might be part of the solutions for some people. I certainly wouldn't suggest that, you know, spending copious amounts of time on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and whatever is necessarily a great idea. But I also don't think that these are the evils of our time that need to be purged if we're ever going to advance as humans. Right. It's just not how I see it. I think the responsibility lies on us to adapt to the context that we're in. And so, we all know now. I mean, it's been out enough. We all know that social media is, has a, what I would call an inherent weakness. If you just think about what Facebook does or Instagram does or TikTok does. If you've got a million videos out there and people are trying to access some fraction of them, there has to be a selection process for what the system puts in front of your face. Totally. That's the inherent problem of it. And so, we can talk all we want about how horrible these social media platforms are and what algorithms they're using to sort and sift content. The reality is that, yeah, there may be some abuses there, but this is just part of the problem. And all of the search engines have it. AI will have it. All of these things have it. There's just so much information out there. Researchers have this. I mean, when I was doing my dissertation, you know, that was probably the most rigorous research I've ever done. And you have, you know, peer reviewers who are forcing you to do that sort of rigorous research. Right. So they're checking in and making sure that they know you've covered what you're supposed to cover. But the reality is I was only covering a small subset of the actual research that was out there. Couldn't, you couldn't grab it all. Right. And so, you know, you're always presenting on some sort of limited information, whether you're humans or whether you're a system. And I think that's one of those inherent biases, the inherent weaknesses that we don't often recognize. So, uh, I, all that to say, you know, I think part of what we need to do as Christians is we need to get better at understanding how to sift and sort that information, how to understand that there's a broader, you know, we, many of these platforms, it's like looking through a crack in a wall or a keyhole, right? Yeah. You can see into the room, but you can't see the whole room. Yeah. Limited perception. Yeah. And so we just, and that's fine. Like there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I think that's the trick. There's nothing wrong with that. We just have to recognize that that's, that's what it is. Sure. And then start acting as if we know that that's what it is. Yep. I think a lot of times what we're doing is we're acting as if, no, I'm looking through the right keyhole. You're looking through the wrong keyhole. And what I'm seeing is correct. And what you're seeing is wrong. It's like, no, that's probably not it. Right. It's probably that we're both seeing different things and we need to somehow reconcile these. Sure. And so Christians just need to be a little wiser, I think, as we're interacting with this information, as we're interacting with people, trying to be curious and recognizing that they're not the only ones who have looked through a keyhole. Yeah. We also have looked through a keyhole. Totally. Right. The difference for us is that we also have God's word. We have the revelation of God that guides us into reality in a way different than any other book ever will. And so we do have that advantage, that perspective, that privilege. Yep. And we need to approach these matters from that basis. I was just going to say, shameless plug, if anyone listening to this today agrees with or is inspired or encouraged by this, what James just said, we definitely try to put our social media as, like, the Bible-centric. Like, everything comes from that. We run it by that. So whatever we're talking about, whatever we're posting about, we don't try to let our opinions on the matter be what we post about. We try to keep it at the center with Christ and his word. So, shameless plug there, but we could put Useful to God Ministries Instagram in the show notes. Useful to God on Facebook. You can find us on YouTube. If you're interested in this, it's not James's perception of things. It's not me. It's not anyone else on our team. We try to run it all by God and, you know, through his word. Because that has got to be our center, I think. No, I think that's a good word, Nate. And it is really at the heart of what we're trying to do. Thinking Christian is not about thinking like James or Nate or anybody else, really. It's about thinking along the biblical text and having patterns of thought that are rooted deeply in the biblical text. And so we've got to, these things become difficult and highly nuanced in part because the Bible is such a complex and interesting book. And it's God's word to us. And so it makes sense on a lot of levels, but when it hits the ground, we've got a lot of thought and disagreement and conversation.

Have about it because this is the infinite mind coming to finite creatures. I mean, it's kind of an amazing feat. So, yeah, that's a good I think that's a good shameless plug, Nate. And I'll just throw in this last one and say we'll close it out here. But I just encourage folks to subscribe to Thinking Christian. Hit the subscribe button or follow us on whatever platform you're listening on. If you're listening on life audio or Apple or Spotify or whatever, subscribe to us, link to us, like us, whatever it is that platform actually does. That helps us out tremendously. We've had a great year. We just had our one-year anniversary of Thinking Christian, and we've been really pleased with the results and would be, I would just say thank you to everybody who's listened to the podcast over this past year. It's been a great time, a wild ride. I've had some fantastic guests. We've had great conversations, and we're planning on keeping it going next year. So like, subscribe. If you have a positive comment, go and review us on Apple or Spotify. That's always helpful too. Just anything you can do to help support the podcast in that way would be great. Thank you so much and get out there and love your neighbor as we are to love ourselves, regardless if they agree with you 100% on everything or not. That would be my biggest thing from today and something I have to tell myself every day. I want people to see me and see love. I want them to see Jesus, not that, oh, no, we don't agree with everything, so I'm going to cut you off or I'm going to draw this line in the sand. So thank you, James. This conversation was really good for me. I've been wrestling with some of these thoughts in my mind, so this is awesome. I really appreciate it, everything you had to say. Yeah, thanks, man. I appreciate the conversation too, and we will catch all of you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. So take care. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. What do you do when your world is falling apart? How do you march when it would be easier to stay where you are and die? Join me every week on the March or Die podcast, and we'll discuss that and so much more.