Soundbites and Slogans: Thinking Christian in a World of Half-Truths

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, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm James Spencer. I'm joined by Nate this afternoon, and we are going to be talking a little bit about, I suppose we could say, we're talking about Israel and Gaza, but that's not quite it. What we're really addressing is another one of these articles that I wrote for Christianity.com, and they were asking for something that would address some Twitter comments that came out from a couple of congresspeople, one congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, one congressman, Randy Fine. And so we're going to be talking about that back and forth, the context of the tweets, or the, I guess we don't call them tweets anymore, the Xs, are, you know, Israel and Gaza sort of related, and so that'll come up. But I think the context of the conversation is, really, what do these posts mean for the way we should think about the Israel-Gaza conflict? So, Nate, man, welcome to the show. This one's a little heavier than our last one, where we were talking about Labubus, but still very important. Very, very important. I think a lot of people are curious about this, but the very issue you kind of hit on there is we just don't really know. There's not enough information out there. There's just a lot of people's opinions or tweets, Xs, whatever you want to call it. So... Yeah, I think it's really hard. It is such an important issue. It's one of those things where, you know, obviously, the baseline opinion I have on it is, no war is a good war. Right? We could talk about just war theory all we wanted, but at the end of the day, these are people made in the image of God who are dying and don't need to. They're dying because these conflicts happen, and we know, like Jesus said, you know, there will be wars and rumors of wars. These things must happen. And so there's a sense in which these sort of conflicts are inevitable. Their inevitability doesn't make them any more palatable. And so I think just baseline, we can say, this war, no matter what the motivations or the agendas or the whatever happening around it, even if it were the most just war ever, it's a tragedy. And so this war is even more complicated because of the history of Israel and the various dynamics with Hamas and Gaza and how civilians are being treated and all those kind of different things. I honestly don't know a lot about that. You know, if I were to share my thoughts on those issues, they would be completely uninformed or totally generalized in a way that is completely unhelpful. And so we're not really going to dive into you and I's perspective on Israel-Gaza because I think we both, like we talked about before we started recording, neither of us really have a good understanding of it. Sure. No, I think if it was here in the United States, it would be a lot different. Everybody doesn't probably realize, but it's been going on since October of last year. Like it's out of sight, out of mind for us. We see it when it pops up and comes to the top of our newsfeed, but for the most part, we're not realizing the devastation probably that's happening, the amount of inability to get supplies and food and things like that to these innocent people. Think about if you were there with your kids, it would obviously be a lot more important to you than it is to us. It doesn't affect us on our daily lives. It's just sometimes in our news. So I think that's a big part of it as well. Yeah. I mean, I think we need to, in order to really understand this issue, and I think there have been podcasts that have done this much better than we would be able to right at this moment. They've talked about that history, that relatively long history of how Israel was established, the ongoing tensions between, you know, Israel and Palestine, and how all of that sort of worked itself through all the way to October 7th and beyond. And so I think to really understand this conflict and how all of these pieces are playing together, you do have to have a deeper understanding of the history than I do right now. I mean, I'm an Old Testament guy, so I kind of have a good sense of the biblical theology of Israel and the crux that it is for biblical interpretation. But my deep knowledge of Israel really ends with Revelation. And so I don't know too much about the history of Israel. I've been there twice. I've heard tour guides talk about that history. I've met people who have served in the Israeli army, and they've talked about that history. But I personally don't have a deep knowledge about that history. I've never studied it. I don't have a strong academic background in it. And so it's just, it's difficult for me to comment on that whole context and how this particular conflict that's going on in Gaza fits within that. So we won't be doing that. So what are we going to be doing? We're going to be looking at some X posts and talking a little bit about something I do know something about. And we've talked about a number of different times, Nate, is the oddities of politics in America. And so let's tell a little story. We have a three-part series. Right, right. We've got this sort of tragic war that's happening over in Israel and Gaza. Very divisive. People's views on it in the United States. Nobody has a clear view necessarily on it. There's a lot of disputes that go on around it, whether Israel is doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and, you know, how all this stuff plays out. And that's no different in the political realm. But ABC reported at one point that there's this, the Gaza's, I guess, Hamas-run Ministry of Health is the way they describe it. So evidently, Hamas is in charge of the Ministry of Health over there. And they claimed that they had recorded the deaths of 15 people, including children, within a 24-hour period. And that that death toll was pretty significant. And so Randy Fine, who is a congressman from Florida, he made a post on X that reads this, and I'm just going to quote it. So this is a quote, Release the hostages. Until then, starve away. This is all a lie anyway. It amazes me that the media continues to regurgitate Muslim terror propaganda, end quote. Now, just on the face of it, like that, I did a little bit of poking around, found NGO reports, non-governmental organizations who are providing some level of humanitarian aid to the Gazans that are saying that there is starvation, there is famine, there is, you know, like, it's war. There is collateral damage that's being felt in terms of food shortages and the inability to deliver food to the people who need it most. Like, all that's happening. And so, just as claim on the face of it, is difficult to swallow. It's hard to believe that all of the, that we're seeing of, you know, starvation and famine and the inability to get food to people in Gaza is false. That's hard to believe. I would say that I don't believe it. I think I trust the NGO reports and some of those other boots on the ground to show that, no, famine is part of what's happening in war. Right. Supply chains, supply lines are difficult to run. You know, you name any sort of logistical factor in war is going to disrupt it. You know, you add different layers on top of that, and it seems obvious that people would be having more difficulty getting food and that starvation could very well be occurring. And I think the independent reports on that are pretty clear. So, I have trouble believing what he's saying, right? But then I think you also have to deal with the callousness of what he's saying. Now, he doesn't believe that people are starving, so we have to take that into account. But even so, to suggest that people should just go ahead and starve until the hostages are released, that's a hard line to take. Yeah, any thoughts, Nate? I mean... Yeah, when I first heard that and read it, I was just like, man, that is like, I'm sure he didn't read it back because how do you read something like that that you want to say to the whole world without feeling like, well, there's no humanity there. There's like no compassion or empathy. Like you said, that's a really hard stance to take. Yeah. And that, so, all that to say, you know, we've got a context where ABC has run a story, right? This one congressman has responded to that story in a way that I would say is, at the very least, doesn't show any evidence that it's an informed opinion. Right. Like, he's not citing his source.

Is there anything like that? He's just putting it out there in the world, right? Now, maybe he's got some sort of secret knowledge that he isn't conveying there, but if he really wants his post to be more credible, he should go ahead and say that, right? And so he's just putting, it feels like he's just putting an opinion out in the world. And so, as often happens on social media, we have a response from another congressperson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is the rep from Georgia, and she says this, quote, It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that October 7th in Israel was horrific, and all hostages must be returned. But, so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and the starvation happening in Gaza, end quote. Okay, so on the surface, I don't know that her post seems much more balanced, although that's not the whole of it. She does go through a whole prologue where she sort of makes Randy Fine seem like he never should have gotten elected. And so, but that portion I quoted seems like a much more balanced perspective, but the word that caught people's attention was genocide, and the question of whether or not Israel is actually engaged in genocide in Gaza. And that was sort of what I ended up talking about in the article. How do we take some of these, these are people who represent us. They're in government, they're supposed to be representing us. They have access, we think at least, to different reports than maybe we're getting, or at least they have those sooner than we get them. And yet, what we're starting to see is, sort of, in the case of Fine, I think, an unsupported claim about the veracity of ABC's reporting. And then in Marjorie Taylor Greene's post, really an assumption, a sort of trial without a jury, that Israel is engaged in genocide, and framing it as Israel intentionally going after Palestinians because they're Palestinians, potentially going after Gazans because they're Gazans. Right? That's how the UN sort of documents on genocide define genocide. It's you're going, you know, if you want to exterminate Christians, you're going after Christians as such. You're not happening to kill Christians because they live in the same area as your enemy. That's a very different thing. And so these two claims, these two posts, really do seem to advance claims about what's going on in Gaza that are at the very least under-informed and under-supported. And so that's kind of what I saw when I was looking at these two posts. I looked and I didn't find, I wish I could find something local there that would give us a better portrayal, but, like, I think maybe it's just not happening like you would think because of maybe how bad it is. I don't know, but I can't really seem to find anything in Gaza locally. I had trouble finding anything too, and I think ultimately when I was thinking about how to go about framing an article on these two posts that we saw on X, what I decided to do was to say, you know, if I can't find the information, if I can't find real, credible information about exactly what's going on in Gaza, either these two people have unique knowledge about what's going on in Gaza that they're deciding to release via X in very pithy, non-supported ways on X, right? I would argue not the best way to communicate your perspective on Gaza or to communicate really important information about a very complex situation. Like, I know they don't limit you to 120 characters anymore, but 120 characters just really isn't enough. Right. It needs to be more substantive. But I couldn't find anything either, Nate. It's very muddled, everything that's going on. I think we can get a better sense. There's certainly a sense in which I think we know what's going on over there. The real questions become then the why, you know, the what does it mean sort of questions. And those, I think, are the aspects of these two posts that I sit back as someone who, you know, interprets for a living, I guess, and I sit back and say, it feels overstated. That's what it feels like to me. It feels under-informed and overstated. And again, these are people who are supposed to be representing us. So what are they doing? Why is it that they feel they can be this uncareful about releasing information that is going to be It's going to elicit emotional responses. 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. Well, especially when some of them tie back to just personal opinion. That's really what, there's no, there's nothing ground like that grounds either one of those statements or perspectives, like, from credible, like, on-the-ground experience, like, because if so, there would be footage, there would be photos. Like, we haven't seen any of that. Even that thing you sent me from Tucker Carlson where the Green Beret was kind of, like, blowing the whistle on some of the stuff and he's like, I've had it. I'm leaving the military, you know, I'm doing this and that. And he's kind of portraying that. But there's so much that we don't know. Like, did he have another experience? Is he jaded because of something else? And if not, how come you can't show us footage of that? You know, like, that's the whole catch-22 here, man. Like, you can get fired up and riled up from reading something online, but at the end of the day, 99% of the time, it seems like lately anyway, it's all based on people's perspective and their opinion. Yeah. And I think we really have to, again, after looking at these two posts and sort of seeing how much reaction there was to them, I think we've just got to figure out how are we going to go about forming judgments and making judgments, making decisions about the reality that we're presented with as Christian people who very much want to have a real understanding of the world and what's going on in it. I don't think Christians are trying, we shouldn't be, I would say, trying to pick a side on this issue. I think when we look at things, we want justice to be done. And that sense of justice isn't tied to who wins. That sense of justice is tied to what's right. What's right. So do I believe that Israel probably has done things wrong in Gaza? Yes. I don't think any nation, no matter what sort of its history or even its theological import, is immune from mistakes, overreaches, inappropriate activities. That's clearly not the case. I mean, even in the Old Testament, right? You see, I mean, Israel is exiled. And the theological reason that they are exiled is because they have not been honoring God. The chosen people in the Old Testament do things wrong. And so justice now is not just whoever wins, they get to determine what's right and what's wrong. I think there has to be a sense of justice where we're just sitting back and saying, what's right? How does all of this get reconciled within something that approximates judgment that would gesture toward God's coming judgment? What does that look like? And so I don't think it's an all in or all out. Right. I don't think you're for Palestine or for Israel. I think if, as Christians, we should posture ourselves as being for justice. We should be posturing ourselves for the glory of God. And we should be lamenting the fact that people are dying daily having not received Jesus Christ. And so there's just a different perspective, I would argue, that Christians have to at least in part have in mind and allow us to frame how we think about

these various issues. I think it's the same reason, like your comment, you know, this Randy Fine, his comments are just out of bounds. It's a really callous comment to make. If you want to critique the news media, fine. If you think the news media is putting out false information, justify that claim. Don't just put it out there in sort of a snarky statement and minimize the damage that's being done to people in a war-torn area. Absolutely. And if you look at both sides of that, James, like she obviously doesn't like the hostage situation any more than he does. She's just wanting to point out because of his stance, you know, it's like, they're both upset with both of them, but they're leaning more towards one side or the other. And I don't think you can have frustration really, if you're like really a good person, especially us believers, if we have Christ inside of us. I don't know how you could look at this situation and not be outraged or upset with both parts because it's innocent people being affected on both sides. The hostage situation should frustrate us, but so should the starvation issue and the lack of food and all that stuff. So I don't think you can, and I know it's probably not intentional. She's trying to make her point. He's trying to make his, but you can't negate one to focus on the other because you should be outraged about both, in my opinion. Right. I think that's hitting on, like, you're saying what I was thinking in, when I was saying, let's aim for justice. Let's be on the side of justice. Like we have to lament both sides of this. And we've got to understand that it's a very complex issue and there aren't necessarily white hats and black hats, right? It isn't, you know, some sort of old Western where we know who the good guy is and we know who the bad guy is. It's not that. It's a much more complex problem. And so what are we lamenting? Well, we're lamenting that it's going on. We're lamenting that there's, you know, that there is collateral damage. We should be concerned that the leaders on either side are making choices that would increase that collateral damage or intentionally involve civilians in a war, right? We should be concerned about all of that, all at the same time. And I don't think that there, I guess my thought would be, it's difficult for me to sit back and look at it and go, based on the information I'm seeing, I don't understand how Randy Fine, Marjorie Taylor Greene get to the positions they're at. I would have real trouble believing that nothing is happening in Gaza that would, you know, that would not involve the, the starvation of people, right. Who aren't getting food because of the war. And I have real difficulty understanding how you can make the claim for genocide without further justification. Right. That's my problem, I think, with the way they've approached this. Right. Is that they're making these claims with no justification. And I suppose maybe it's just my, you know, sort of academic bent, right? But it's almost like you, you know, you write a paper and you don't include a footnote. And so I understand, like, I mean, I just wrote, this is an opinion piece that I wrote and we're talking about, and it is an opinion piece. And so you, there are word limitations on what you're writing online. There are format limitations. So oftentimes you can't just justify everything. I mean, it's not like you can footnote every aspect of it. So I'm sympathetic to that. I get it. But at the same time, these are like three sentence claims about a very serious issue. And at some point, don't we have to just acknowledge that's too short? It's not the right format to convey these kind of opinions about it. That's sort of where I think my head goes. And, and to see these people with all of this influence doing that, it feels to me like they're trying to draw more attention to themselves than they are trying to draw attention to what's going on in Israel and Gaza. Yeah, there's been a major shift and we've talked about this a great deal. President Trump is definitely no, he does not shy away from social media, never has. And I kind of, we both, I think, wish sometimes he would more of the other stuff and just kind of stay off social media. But there's been a cultural shift there where somebody like fine might be like, oh, well, you know, everyone's accepting it from our commander in chief and he's doing it literally every day. I feel like he posts on true social or X or something every day. And so instead of the way things used to be, I mean, even look back at like George W. Bush. I don't feel like he ever posted on social media. Again, it is a different era, a different time. It wasn't as culturally relevant back then, but I think that's a new era that we're getting into where it gets muddy and these politicians feel like they can just do that. I mean, without even having any restraint or reserve. If he would have just sat on that tweet and come back the next day, he probably would have been like, ah, I probably shouldn't send that. And, you know, if he regrets it or wishes now that he's seen some of the backlash from it, but it's like, you could delete it, but it's still out there. You know, it's still gonna live forever. And it's like, you got voted into that position. That's a position of power. And it's, so many eyeballs are on what you say and what you put out there. It's just crazy to me. I'm surprised he doesn't have somebody in his staff that is like, do we wanna proofread this first? It's like, almost like he just fired it off on his recliner at night and that's his phone. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing to me, and I think what's even more amazing to me, and I, you know, I found it, there's always an irony when I write these type of articles, right? Because many times I don't find any particular substance to the issue. In this case, you know, the question was, what should Marjorie Taylor Greene's comment about genocide do to our conversations about Israel and Gaza? And my answer in the piece is basically nothing. It shouldn't mean anything because essentially both her and fine are just advancing slogans. They're not making an argument. They're just, you know, basically putting a sign in their yard. Well, that doesn't really change our conversation because it doesn't add anything to it. It doesn't actually give us any information. It doesn't help us to frame an issue. It's just a slogan. And I think, you know, kind of where I came to in the article is this. We have, in the information age, we're gonna struggle because we have too much information, right? That's just part of what we're gonna struggle with. There's too much input coming into us. And so we've got to figure out how to filter and limit it. And since we're filtering and limiting, I'm wondering why we would ever settle for a post on X. There's better information out there. Find it. If this is a, if this is a topic with which you have a deep passion and interest, find better information. Don't settle for these inane posts on X where they are not giving you anything except just some sort of random claim. And so I think the way to get our politicians to stop doing this is to stop listening to it. Now, arguably you could say, well, writing an article about it doesn't help. Probably right. I don't know what else to do other than to say, like, once you're demonstrating that these people are completely putting vacuous opinions out into the ether, right? Demonstrate that and then say, go somewhere else. Right. Like we have better information sources. I mean, I, if their, their post did prompt me to go look at NGO reports that I hadn't seen before. And so, yeah, if there's a benefit to it, maybe it drove me to better information. But at the end of the day, I just, I think it's lamentable that these are the voices that get our attention versus some of the more substantive conversations we could be having about these issues and maybe developing a better understanding about it. Sure. Sorry, I didn't mean to try to cut you off. You're good. You're good. But we're having this conversation and hopefully other people come to that conclusion and ask themselves these kinds of questions. We do have to have some kind of cultural shift. Otherwise we're gonna, it's only gonna get worse. Like we're, we're heading down the backside of this and I feel like it's just, it's gonna become a bigger and bigger problem. So I'm glad that we're, you know, at least thinking about that and having that conversation. Yeah. And I, I would just say to people, there's, I don't think there's any perfect information, right? I mean, I've, I've been at theology for a long time and there's a reason that my wife is frustrated that I have so many books. And it's because there's always some other wrinkle, some other perspective, some other nuance that can be brought out. And so that requires an ongoing conversation that is then represented and codified in books. Right. It's, it's represented and codified in articles. And that's because we don't think we have gotten to the end of the conversation yet. It's not complete. And so I think, you know, not all information is gonna be perfect. Not all information is gonna be complete, but there's still better and worse information. There, there's better ways, I think, to portray this serious situation with nuance and complexity that still helps us understand what's going on than these sort of tweets or, I keep calling them tweets because, you know, I'm used to Twitter, but

expose, these sort of expos that are just making completely unjustified claims. 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. Yep. And the more troubling thing that worries me is people that are uneducated. You know, we've spent a great deal looking into this stuff and talking about it, but I still feel like I barely have my head wrapped around some of it. But the average person is probably even further behind me in that regard. And if they hear, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene's comment about genocide, they're just going to run with that and we're thinking in their minds subconsciously even, like, oh, genocide's happened over there. And when I think of that, like I think of true genocide that's taken place, like in Rwanda and like different countries like in the past, like the Tutsis and the Hutus, like that was actual true genocide where one tribe is trying to completely eradicate and knock them off the face of the map where they don't not exist anymore. I don't know if that's necessarily happening, but when you say something like that and people hear it, then when they're in conversations in their circles at their church or their work or their families or their friends, then they're like, oh, well, genocide's happened there. And they're like, well, how do you know that? Or where did you see that? They're never going to say, well, I saw it on a Twitter post. Because if they did, people would be like, you know, and they would discount what they're saying. But it gets written into the fact just because it's somebody's opinion. And that's the thing that I'm most concerned about, I think, with this and having this conversation about it. Well, and I think, you know, to that point, just to sort of give people a little bit of perspective, in the article, which we can, we can probably link out of some of this other stuff, but you can also find it on my Christianity.com author page. Just type in Christianity.com, James Spencer, and um it in a search engine and you should be able to find it. But um there's a 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. Like that's sort of what we've globally, I suppose you could say, go toward. When we're looking to define genocide, this is where we would tend to go. Right? It was a law that a number of nations got together and started, you know, saying, okay, what is this? And it was the, they defined it as the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. And so there's an intent aspect involved here. And this is where I think that the comment about genocide is difficult. Because right now, I think, and again, I don't know the full situation, but unless you have Israelite leaders coming out and saying, you know, we want to exterminate the Gazans because they're Gazans. I'm not sure you can really gauge the intent. And so it becomes a judgment of belief. Whereas what I would just argue is, look, the situation is bad enough. You know, at some point we need to be having the question of how much collateral damage is too much collateral damage. That, to me, is a more helpful question where we're, we're trying to figure out, like, how do we settle this? How, how, if we were thinking about it from a political perspective, you know, how would the United States feed into this? Are they trying to solve a genocide problem, which I think would be solved in a very different way? We have solved those kinds of problems in different ways in the past, not as Americans, but just as the world. I mean, World War II was a genocide problem. It was a world, world domination problem. I mean, he wasn't just going after one group. He was going after everyone who wasn't, you know, Hitler was going after everyone who wasn't Aryan. And so you did have a genocide problem there, and that was solved in a very different way. You just can't allow it to happen. And so eventually people got on board and it was all taken care of. If that's really what's going on in Israel, I think that that needs to be clear because the response is very different. If what we're dealing with is ongoing collateral damage, Right? That is, you know, being waged against an enemy that maybe you'll never defeat, sort of like our war on terror. How do you uproot all of the terrorists because it's not like they're wearing uniforms. Right. You don't exactly know who they are in every case. And so if it's this unknown war, Yeah, I mean, how do you, how do you solve this issue? How does that ever end? It just feels to me like her comment on genocide was probably, I would, if I'm being my most generous, I would just say it's uncareful. It's, it's a non-technical way of referring to, um, the collateral damage that's happening in Gaza. But I think what it really needs to be is a judicial investigation after the war, or even now, of sitting back and saying, is there really intent here to exterminate a people or part of a people? Um, and this isn't a traditional war. This is actually something very different. Right. But either way, putting that out there on X just doesn't feel to me like the right thing to put out there. It feels very slippery, very uncareful, and ultimately unhelpful. And so again, I'd say, when we're looking at some of these posts, I would just encourage Christians not to allow them to frame our worldview. I wouldn't even let this conversation that you and I have had frame your worldview. If you really care about this issue, you have to find better resources than an expose or a 30-minute podcast. You just have to. I think there's only so much of the complexity and so much you can present in any limited amount of time. And so people who really care about this, they have to go deeper. Yep. Even the news is not really a good source because it's tough. Everything is very limited, and it's pretty much across the board, even if it is one left and right mainstream media, it's still going to only have certain parts. Yeah, it really is. It's very polarized, and it's presented in a polarized fashion. I've listened to podcasts on this, you know, like hour and a half long podcasts that I thought were really good. And then I've listened to another one that was about the same length, and you'd go, oh, the first one really missed a lot. You know, it's just there's a lot there. And so I think my advice to Christians is not necessarily stay off X. I mean, be on X if you want to. But I think at best, what I'm finding is that X prompts my thinking about issues that I really care about, and it pushes me to go deeper than I would have before. That's not a bad thing. But I kind of like to have a short memory about all the expos that I've ever read. They just fade into the background as I get deeper and deeper into an issue until I don't really remember what the offhand comment was. And I think that's the right way to think about what happens on X most of the time. You try to think for yourself and not somebody's opinion as gospel. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I learned a long time ago not to bother commenting on X. But I haven't found it to be a place conducive for conversation. So in any case, I guess to sum up everything we've said, you know, this wasn't meant to be an Israel-Gaza episode, but what I think this is meant to be is, hey, Christians, as we're interacting in a world where multiple different opinions are put out there where information is both voluminous, which means that we've got to do a lot of sifting and sorting, but also in depth enough that we can actually find good information if we're willing to work for it. Let's do that work on the issues that we care about. And I would just also say, we don't have to care about every issue such that it would drive us to do that research. I've been pretty open about the fact that I know nothing about, let's say, the environment and the climate. That doesn't mean that I think that it's an unimportant issue. It just means that it doesn't raise to the level where I've decided, oh man, I'm really interested in that. I feel like this could be in my wheelhouse. I'm going to go and do a lot of research on it. I just don't know. Right. So I care. I just don't care enough to go out and get really deep in that issue. I've got other things that I care about more. And I think that's okay. Each of us is going to have our own limited understanding of aspects of the world. And that's fine.

My point is not, hey, go and research every issue. My point is that when you find something that's an area of passion, get past the expos. Yeah. Get past expos, get past the opinion pieces, and really dig in yourself. Yep. Because at the end of the day, you can trust what you uncover yourself and not have to wonder in your mind, like, okay, how much of what they were saying is their opinion, their narrative that they're trying to steer towards, or the agenda. Because at the end of the day, if I've learned anything the last couple of years in politics, there's always those two things. There's always an opinion piece, always an agenda. And that's a conspiratory type of statement. It's just a fact. And I think people get sucked into the water that they don't even realize it themselves sometimes. That's what we're talking about. But I agree with you. And I think we, number one, should have the compassion and the love that Christ has for everyone in these issues, and we shouldn't make up our minds so quickly, especially in something so surface and so quick that someone can just fire off on their phone, you know, whenever they're frustrated, they probably should have eaten a Snickers or something. That's right. That's right. I'll close it out and just tell the story, and then we'll close the episode out. But when I was first, you know, I transitioned out of higher ed in 2018, and I was really angry. I mean, it was sort of an unceremonious couple of years there at my former institution. And there was a lot of social media swirl that was going on about things that were happening at the Institute, true or not, didn't really matter. But it created a huge headache and a lot of fires that you had to put out. And as an administrator, I dealt with that for a couple of years then. And so by the time I left, I was really, I was angry. And I decided to start a blog and thankfully I had the wisdom to say, hey, Kim, my wife, will you read through these blogs and tell me what you think? And for about, I don't know, maybe six, nine months after I started the blog, I didn't post anything because Kim kept coming back and she'd go, nope, still too angry. Nope, still too angry. No, it's still too angry. And so it was nice to have that filter of just not going out there and like, you know, blasting out something that eventually I would have regretted. Right. And I think I look back, even at the pieces that I've put some thought into, right. And there are some of those that I regret. Like I would go back and change certain things about them. I would probably change my perspective now. And so having that digital trail, I don't think it's bad, right. It sort of traces the thought at the moment, but I think some of the posts that I was writing early on, Kim was wise enough to go, yeah, you can't post this. This isn't, this isn't really what you think. You're just angry. So So I think, yeah, we have to watch these reactionary vehicles that just allow us to express as opposed to really think through. And my encouragement to Christians would be ignore some of those more emotional ones, drive yourself to the pieces that are actually trying to think through something and settle in there. I think we're all going to be better off if we do that. Yeah. Trust your gut, trust the Holy Spirit. Like the Bible talks so much about discernment and that's something that we have to actually use as a function and exercise it. Otherwise it doesn't grow. It doesn't get strong. And it's seasons of my life where I have thought that I knew better and it always turns out just like every story in the Bible. Like we don't know even a smidge as good as God does. And so very arrogant for us in those seasons, but it's human nature. We all have that human condition. We all have that ability to do that. And I'm sure we've all done it at different times, but all it takes is a few things like that. My wife has saved me so many times over the years, like when I stump on my foot in real time, like in a meeting or with people, you know, no, don't open that can because it's fine to express those things sometimes to just like your close circle or your spouse. But putting it out there for the whole world, you might want to have somebody proofread it first. Agreed. Well, at the risk of saying something stupid, we'll close the episode there. And thanks everybody for sticking with us. Thanks for being honest on Nate again, talking through these issues. Really appreciate it. And we will catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. I 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. Hello, hello. Quanice Petway here, co-host of the Your Daily Bible Verse podcast. Are you someone who loves to take a deep dive into God's word one verse at a time to explore his will for your life and desire to draw closer to him? If that sounds like you, I'd love to invite you to head over to lifeaudio.com and search Your Daily Bible Verse to tune in and subscribe for daily inspiration, life application, and spiritual transformation through the in-depth exploration of God's word.