Thinking Christian about Our Rights, Freedoms, and Political Participation

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 joined by Nate again. And today we're going to talk a little bit about the politics of the day, as in everyone talking about the politics of the day. But consider this a warm-up for me because I'm going to be on a panel at the end of this month, August 26-27. And I'm going to be at the Christian Post-sponsored Politics in the Pew conference in Grapevine, Texas. And I'm going to be serving on a panel that is talking about the, quote-unquote, Trump factor and Christian nationalism. And so I need all the warm-up that I can get so that I can articulate myself well at this panel and not get booed off stage. I feel like that's a good goal for me. Don't get booed off stage. So, Nate, thanks for having this conversation with me, brother. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited to dive into it. It'll be kind of a prequel to what we're going to have later this month in Texas. Yeah, man. So what are you seeing? What are you seeing on the political landscape? Like, what are you looking at? What's catching your eye? Well, I was just talking about there's a lot of uproar in the last couple days just about Kamala announcing her running mate. And, you know, of course, people start digging in and finding all that they're known for and him being the governor and some of the stuff that he's instrumented there or been instrumental in there in Minnesota. I just was reading about that. And like I was telling you earlier, you know, it could have been way off base to that and way different, and I wouldn't be surprised. I'm just not really surprised much anymore these days. I'm just like, OK, here we go. Let's let's see what kind of stuff we're going to uncover today or find out. But it is polarizing because people are even if they don't want to, they're being forced or people want to force them to pick a side. And you and I have had this conversation many times where I'm kind of in the middle and I don't really care for a lot on both sides. And I'm just trying to look for truth and what's best, but also what serves me as a Christ follower first and foremost. And so navigating that this has been just as good for me as probably anyone else that's listening, just because it's really helped me for the longest time. I avoided politics just because a lot of times I'm like, it doesn't really affect me and what I do. Like my one voice. Yes, people will say, well, then your vote not voting is, you know, and we can argue that all day. But I am more interested in finding value as a Christian and how to think about it and also lead my peers around me, not getting sucked into the turmoil of having to constantly pick a side in every conversation and every topic. And and it's just so it's problematic. I'll say that. Yeah. You know, I was just on an interview this week where I was talking with Sam Roar. He does stand in the gap for the American Pastors Network. And we can link to that episode in the show notes. But one of the things that he asked me, and I thought was really interesting, kind of gets to the heart of the problem that you're addressing here. He asked me whether I felt that voting was a civic act or a sacred act. That might not be exactly the language he used, but it was something around that. My tendency is to see voting as a freedom given to all Americans in the United States and all Americans, I would include Christians in that. So it's a freedom. We have the right to vote. We are free to vote. And so if we view it like that and not as a sacred act, in other words, there are some people who would argue that when we read in, like Romans 13, that we should be subject to governing authorities, that we should honor the emperor as we read in 1 Peter, that that then makes our participation in civic life, particularly through voting, but in other areas, that makes this a sacred act. And so there's two ways to see this. I don't think the answer is just as clear as I'm going to make it here in a minute. I don't agree that voting or political participation are sacred acts. I believe that they are civic acts. And I believe that they are rights and freedoms that have been given to all Americans. The reason that I don't think they are sacred acts is because we have to have provision as we go about submitting to governing authorities for Christian resistance. Right. Shameless plug for my book, Christian Resistance. You can get it on Amazon. But we have to leave room for Christian resistance and Christian resistance is recognizing that our authority is not the governing authority that God has delegated certain rights to, certain responsibilities to, but we are subject to that governing authority because we are subject to God. And so we are obeying almost through as opposed to sitting under an authority. In other words, recognizing that God has instituted this authority, we respect it to the extent that we can continue to point to and glorify God as we go ahead and subject ourselves to it. Mm hmm. But so in that sense, obedience is always sort of a sacred act. Right. Because we're always obeying God. God is delegating authority to these governing authorities, obeying the governing authorities is really about being God. When we resist those governing authorities, when we decide that it's time we can't listen to them. Right. And one of the examples I'll offer is, you know, I've been to Germany four or five times over the last several years. Prostitution is legal in Germany. Does that make it OK for Christians to go out and hire a prostitute? No. No, of course not. Right. Right. And so just because it's legal doesn't mean we have to do it. It's an allowance of the government. It's not a mandate of the government. And even if it were a mandate of the government, every Christian on the planet, I would hope, would stand up and say, nope, nope, you're going well beyond your authority and asking us to do this. We obey God, not man. And so that's where I think that the sacred act in, you know, seeing voting as a sacred act sort of runs aground for me is that our goal, I would say, our purpose in life is to point to and glorify God. That's a riff on the Westminster Shorter Confession that says, you know, the ultimate purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And so when I'm saying that, that's sort of what I'm referencing, that pointing to and glorifying the triune God, if we can vote, we can exercise our right, our freedom to vote and still glorify God. Fantastic. Love it. Love every minute of it. Go vote. Rock the vote, Christian. But I think we have to recognize that there may be times when exercising our rights and freedom, just as Paul talks about in First Corinthians 9 or in various other places, where he recognizes that if he exercises his right, he asserts his right, he practices his freedom, he is leaving the gospel off the table. He's going to hinder the progress of the gospel. That, I think, is the sort of logic we need to walk into politics with. Our first priority is not electing the right person. Our first priority is pointing to and glorifying the triune God. Maybe not even our second priority is choosing the right person. Right. But in recognizing, hey, can we exercise this right we've been given such that there is no hindrance to the advancement of the gospel or such that we can promote the advancement of the gospel? Great. And I think my concern with polarization, you spoke about, Nate, is I'm having more and more difficulty understanding how to go about voting, not because of the issues at play. Right. I don't like the liberal agenda that, you know, Kamala Harris and her running mate often press. I personally don't love a lot of what Donald Trump does. I don't I don't think he I think he panders to Christians and tries to tie us to his agenda in ways that are completely theologically corrupt. And so I'm not I'm far from a Trump evangelical. And I'm certainly not in favor of Kamala Harris. And so where does that leave me? Well, it leaves me in the sense that I don't like a lot of the issues that are being discussed.

And so the question I have on my mind is, can Christians in this polarized environment, how do they make the choice to vote without hindering the gospel? How do they make the choice to vote such that God can be glorified? That, I think, needs to be our primary conversation. And there are many ways that Christians could answer that question. So I'm not suggesting that, in asking that question, everybody should come to the conclusion, we can't vote. Right? I'm not suggesting that at all. I think there are reasons to vote for one candidate over another. There are reasons to do any number of things. But that's where I go back to 1 Corinthians and some of what Paul talks about with regard to freedom, even if we look at the weak and the strong arguments that he makes in Romans 14 and 15, these become matters of conscience, not litmus tests for orthodoxy. And, but it's only when we view voting, which again, I would not say that this is the only view people can have on this. Voting could be viewed as a sacred act. I would just take issue with some of those arguments. I think there's an argument to be made that it isn't a sacred right, that it is a civic act. And if we view them as freedoms and as rights, then I think we can view those, view voting through the lens of the way that Paul talks about, particularly Paul, but I'm sure other places in the Bible, the way he talks about his exercise of those rights and the exercise of those freedoms. The other thing I was going to mention when you asked, like, what I'm seeing, another thing that is concerning to me, but I'm also seeing it a lot is when I, I've been able to vote now for well over 20 years, so I've been through many cycles of, you know, four years where I've been able to vote. But the first time I was 18 and I was able to vote, um, I remember thinking, oh, this is awesome. It's kind of like getting your license or graduating high school. It's kind of a big, you know, add to the list of being able to get a lottery ticket or whatever else. Like I'm an adult now, I can make this decision. And, but then it's like, what does that look like? What does that mean? And then you hear about now the bill or the thing that was passed just recently allowing immigrants to be able to vote for this upcoming election. And that's unprecedented. Like I never would have thought that. I mean, maybe I thought that would happen down the road, but I didn't think it would happen this soon, especially when they say 11 million in the last year and a half have come into our country. Um, but really I've seen people say that it's more like 14 or 15 million in the last two years. Um, I think that could be problematic. I mean, there's, I don't know how far you want to go into that, but have you seen that? Do you, do you know what I'm talking about? Have you seen anybody talk about it and write about it? Um, so, so it's a little new for me, but what I, here's what I would say. I think that, uh, these are the areas where I would argue, not from a Christian perspective, but just from a governmental perspective are problematic. Uh, there are, I think there are specific obligations that citizens have to the government. Uh, for instance, we all pay taxes. You know, it's one of the ways that we demonstrate ourselves to be good citizens. We pay taxes. We are in theory, we're supposed to obey the laws of the land and not, you know, go outside the boundaries. And if, if we do go outside those boundaries and there are consequences. Uh, but there is a sense of good citizenship that I think all people who are living within a particular nation need to exercise. And those laws of good citizenship are important for maintaining cohesion and a deep understanding of who we are as a people and what our obligations are to one another within a given nation. I don't put those on the level of, hey, these are Christian values or Christian virtues, or this is, you know, here's the theological conviction that we should have about this. Because at the end of the day, you know, I would still suggest that, you know, if we were, if we had been there at the beginning, right, colonizing American aid, and we're on the border of Pennsylvania and Ohio, I think those states border, right? There wouldn't have been a sign. Right. You didn't have a welcome to Ohio sign. Welcome to Pennsylvania. Right. You know, if you're down by Texas and Mexico, you don't, there's no specific boundary. Like it doesn't, you know, it's not, you know, Texas isn't tattooed on one side and Mexico on the other. And so these lines are arbitrarily drawn to some degree, but as we've arbitrarily drawn those lines, we've also come to agreements about what we're going to do and how we're going to act within them. And so to the extent that we have now people who are going to determine the course of the nation, who are not abiding by those compacts and those agreements, I have some difficulty with that. I think it's, and again, it's not a, it's not a Christian comment. 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. That's just a basic citizenship sort of comment. If I can have all the rights and privileges, and I think that's probably a, probably too far in age, maybe it's not all the rights and privileges. If I can live at this, in this country and get some taste of the privileges that exist within this country without doing things like paying taxes. Right. Contributing to society as an American. Yeah, exactly. Right. I think it's, I think that that's difficult to square with getting able, being able to pick your representatives because you're not yet part of a country that is in, for the people, of the people, and by the people. You're not part of the people yet. So, I would definitely say that, but I would also say from the Christian side, and this is something I've written on with regard to immigration, I don't think from a Christian perspective, it really matters that much. Because when we're looking at people in front of us who have needs, we're not looking at whether they are, we're not checking their immigration papers. Right. We are good neighbors regardless. And so, we want to make sure that those people are cared for. We want to make sure that they are getting what they need. We want to make sure that they have a genuine sense of well-being. We want to love them as, because they're our neighbor. And so, I think that the Christian perspective on this is probably going to end up being split. There is a very real sense in which I do think that there, we need to have immigration policy that allows people to come here, that allows people to come here legally. I also recognize how big a challenge that is. Right. I mean, I've worked in college admissions long enough and around college admissions long enough to know that it takes a fair amount of resource and people to process applications. And functionally, if you're going to do that with immigration, you're going to need an army of people processing applications. So that you understand who's coming in, why they're coming in, if they should come in, where they're going to situate. That is a massively bureaucratic process, and I don't think it's realistic for us to think that immigration policy is simply the only answer. Right. At the same time, I do think there is something to it. We have to address there. It's a good half measure at the very least. But then on the Christian side, I would say, from the perspective of building up the kingdom, I say bring all comers. Yeah. And I agree, too. I think the only thing that concerns me is just how the playing field could change like that. Like one thing gets changed and it's never been that way before. And you see the stark contrast in the border, for instance, when Trump was in and then the last few years. I mean, it's a huge difference. The emphasis is just because one side was putting emphasis on it and the other is not, like you're saying. It's a huge undertaking and it was probably all those things are now allocated to other things. It's just a shift in priority. Right. Yeah. But it is concerning. I know we're not supposed to have a spirit of fear. And ultimately, and this is where I'm speaking to myself, like I need to just put my hope and faith and trust in Jesus and not our government. Because no matter who, like we've talked about before many times, it doesn't matter really who wins this time for us.

because we still have to answer it, you know, this isn't it for us. Some people, they only see this, and I see a lot of Christians, here's another problematic part of this, they get baited into this, and then they get so hyper-focused on it that it becomes like put up on a pedestal where God is supposed to be, and we shouldn't be focused and worrying about that because you're just borrowing tomorrow's, you know, I forget that quote with worry, but like some things we worry ourselves with, we really shouldn't be because we can't change it or control it anyway, you know? Yeah, let me try to explain it like this. This is how I've begun thinking about it. Again, I go back to sort of ancient Israel, right? I'm an Old Testament geek, so I kind of have to go back there. Ancient Israel didn't get to vote for their leaders ever. Love it. Right? They didn't choose any of them. Right. But, you know, I like to sort of think when Nebuchadnezzar is going to come in and deport the nation of Israel, going to take them into exile, I don't think he would have won the popular vote. Doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel like you have a bunch of Israelites raising their hands and be like, you know who we'd really like? Nebuchadnezzar. He seems fantastic. But we also see that he is an instrument within God's plan. God calls him his servant. And so what I think that we need to get our heads around is that it's okay for us to have discernment and thought around which candidate we think is going to bring in the policies and procedures, the law, the order that we believe needs to be there. There's no problem with that. Right? Like having that idea in our head isn't a problem. Now, what I would argue is that all Christians shouldn't be just discerning based on the issues. We should be discerning what exactly is God doing? What is God doing here? Who does God want in the presidency? Who is he going to instill with this authority and this responsibility? The way we make that decision, the way we think it through, there's a lot that we could talk about there, but let's just say we make our choice. And the day after we make our choice, we find out that our choice was the wrong choice. And I say wrong choice because elections are not won by one set of voters voting more for one candidate than the other. Right? These people are appointed by God. Our elections, and this is sort of a dichotomy, I suppose, but we read in Romans 13, God appoints the governing authority. We could say, well, that really relates, James, to heavenly authorities or whatever. I don't know that I buy that. Right? I think that God places people in the right places. He knows what's happening. These elections are certainly not taking him by surprise and he is not arbitrarily hoping that the evangelicals get out and rock the boat. Otherwise his candidate isn't going to win. I just don't get the sense that that's how God works. And so the person who gets in is the person that God wants in. So what we need to process is not, oh my God, think of all the damage he or she will do while she's in office and how horrible this is going to be for our nation. What we need to do is take a step back and discern what exactly is God doing in this moment? How exactly is God calling me now to act as his disciple, to be a faithful witness within America as all of these things are going on? What does it look like for me to draw glory to God in the midst of a completely new and different situation? That's our, that should be, I think our primary struggle. Not that we can't be disappointed in who wins or that we frustrated with policies or any of that. Like I have that. I would prefer inflation to go down. Like I would prefer college costs to decline. Like I had, you know, one kid going to college and two more on the way. Like I, like I have my own sort of worries and frustrations and all of those kinds of things. But the reality is that there's nobody is going to be put in office who's going to solve those problems. Right. At best, I think they're going to, you know, alleviate pain in one place and create it in another. Thomas Sowell, he's a economist and he says there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. And I would just qualify that and say, yeah, from a human perspective, I 100% agree. There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. From a theological perspective, oh, there's a solution. There's definitely a solution from a theological perspective. His name is Jesus Christ. And so we've just got to sort of rethink the way we process our emotions, I think, around these campaigns, the way we process our thoughts around these campaigns, because if we believe that Jesus is Lord, that assertion is not dependent on who gets elected. And so whoever ends up getting elected, all we're really asking is, man, if Jesus is Lord, what is he doing? And it's not in the sort of the heck is he doing sort of sense, but in the very curious sort of trusting way, I wonder what Jesus is doing at this moment. Like, what is he trying to do? And remaining open and awake and recognizing that God can use us independent of who's in office. That's where Christians have to stay, I think that's the pocket we have to sit in. Yep. I had a lot of conversations this last weekend because from Thursday night to Sunday morning, I was at the lake camping and I had no service. And a couple of my buddies there are really close family friends of ours that we've done stuff with. Our families have kind of grown up together. Our kids have grown up doing this every summer. And, you know, so a lot of us have the same kind of conversations or, you know, same viewpoints, same perspective. And so we were just talking about this. And actually I was able to share something that you share with me recently that give me an incredible amount of peace. The whole parade analogy you gave, like where, you know, you find a spot on a curb and you really can't see much beyond like what's right in front of you because you've got people all around you and on the other side, and you're just looking at one section of the parade at a time. But God's up top looking at the whole, he sees the whole thing in a glimpse, like at once, just because of his view. And I really had to kind of sit with that for a minute and realize like how many times am I slapping God in the face, like saying like, you know, I'm uncomfortable with this right now, or I can't make sense of this. So I just start getting in you just downward spiral. And then you start having all this fear and anxiety and you start playing out scenarios. And it's like, what is the point of doing that? If you really trust in God, he sees it all. And so we're kind of putting him in a box and we're, we're almost bringing him down and putting him in our purview where we're just seeing one spot when that's totally unrealistic because he sees everything. He's everywhere and he knows what's happening before it happens. And so really worrying about these things, like you're saying, does not matter. And then I also get fired up too sometimes. And I was going to say this earlier, but when people say, oh, that's not my president. Well, number one, it is because it might not be the one you wanted, but it is your president. And if you're going to follow scripture and follow God's commands to us, like you said earlier, obeying laws of the land and, you know, giving Caesar what, what is, you know, rightfully his, if we're going to do all that, you can't pick and choose. You can't cherry pick and say, well, this one makes me uncomfortable and it doesn't go along with what I want for myself and my family. You know what I mean? And so there's some, there's, there's incredible peace that comes when you really start to embrace that. And I just, the last couple of weeks, it's really changed my mind because I used to, even just two weeks ago, I was seeing stuff in the headlines and reading stuff and then you start digging in and you can start to get a spirit of fear and you just have to recognize that, that that is not of God and that, you know, we're losing our way just like we can each and every day because we're humans and we, we fall back to those temptations. But if we're really going to trust God and believe God and that is, is who he says he is and is going to do what he says he's going to do, then we're just kind of chasing our tail like a dog trying to figure out and make sense of all this stuff. Yes. It's okay to be aware of it and to have conversations about it, but I want to encourage other people like, Hey, don't be distraught. We know how this ends. We don't know when it is. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think this is the tension between having rights and obeying God, right? Sometimes we just really focus in on our rights, what we should, what we are able to do, right? We're able to make these choices. We've been given the right to make these choices. So why wouldn't we make these choices? And, and there's something to that. Like, I don't think we should just abandon our rights and sit back and let the world go wherever it's going to go. I think there's an appropriate way for Christians to participate in politics that allows us to love our neighbor. And so we should really frame our political participation in terms of loving God, loving neighbor, glorifying God

would hate courage, let's say, from the book of Daniel and the way that Daniel relates to the political environment. And we see Daniel refusing to do some of these things that the, you know, the Babylonians are asking him to do. And we see him, you know, pushing against Babylonian culture. We see him praying when he's told not to pray. We see him worshiping when he's told not to worship. You know, he doesn't eat the king's food. Like, all these different acts of defiance. And we say, yes, that's what we need to do. And we begin to equate that with supporting a particular candidate. And I'm not sure that's always the right way to go. I would tend to say that I would remind people of Deuteronomy, or not Deuteronomy, Daniel, Daniel 3. Daniel 3, Daniel and his friends are in trouble. They're gonna go into the lion's den, and they're about to get thrown in. And they say, you know, God will rescue us from the power of the king. But even if he doesn't, we want to make it clear to you that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up. We are very good at believing that he will rescue us. We're really bad at the, but even if he doesn't. Right? Like, we're not good at seeing that we're gonna push for this. We're gonna obey. We're gonna do what we think is right. We're gonna act on our conscience. We're going to follow our theological convictions. This is where we stand. We're not as good at the, but if he doesn't part. In other words, when we lose, when obedience does not lead to the results we think that obedience should lead to, we're not good at pivoting and saying, even though God didn't give us this earthly victory, this temporal moment where he has saved and delivered us from something that we fear, look, we just wanna make clear, we're still obeying. Right. Even though we lose every time. Right. Right? We're still obeying. We're not as good at that. Yeah, and that's not faith. At the end of the day, that's not faith. Like if you say, well, I'm gonna do this, but the moment that it's not exactly the way I intended it or that I saw it, saw that it would play out, that's not true faith or trust. The moment that it doesn't work out the way you want, and then how foolish and I don't know what another word is for it, but like how arrogant and foolish of us to think that we have a better idea of how it should work out than God does. Because again, that analogy you gave is so brilliant, because we have only just a small section that we're able to see. And I think that's with all, like, that's why bad things happen to us sometimes and we think it's the worst thing ever. But you look down the road years later, after the fact, and you're like, that was the best thing for me because it prepared me for this. I would not have gotten to this place in my life or walked into this valley if I didn't go through that tribulation, that hard time. And there's a song that I love the intro on the radio from Matthew West, and it's like, don't stop praying. And my whole thing is people want to pray, pray, pray when it is something that's pressing for them, that matters to them. We should be praying with the same earnestness and with the same mentality and spirit that we do when things are good and when they're bad. And at the end of the day, like you said, like, it doesn't matter. God's still God and his perception is way different than ours. And that's something that I think we'll always wrestle with until what we were talking about on the last episode, we get more clarity and understanding on the other side. But I think one great example biblically of somebody who did this, and I think we've talked about it before on the podcast, is Josiah. Josiah's reformed. He is explicitly told that none of these reforms are going to save the nation of Judah, that the best God is going to do for him is that he's going to kill Josiah before Judah is punished so that Josiah doesn't have to watch. And Josiah does all the reforms in Israel regardless. He finds the book of the law. They read it. They learn from it. He reforms everything back towards the law, reinstitutes Passover, does all these different things knowing, knowing that God has already said it's not going to change Judah's fate. That's the sort of obedience I think we need to cultivate. You know, even if we knew beforehand, and we do, I mean, I think that's the scary part for me. We know America doesn't last. Right. No nation does. But we're trying to hold on to it because it makes us comfortable and we can have control over it because it's affecting us. Right. These are bounded entities. Like they're temporal. They're provisional. It doesn't make them bad. Right. I mean, I love that quote. I think it's the end of Avengers Age of Ultron. You know, something isn't beautiful just because it lasts. Right. I think it's something like that. Yeah. But I mean, the point is, it's not like this thing has to be eternal for it to be great. Right. It can be great and not last very long. It could be great for a season and for its purpose, just for its time. Right. Which is obviously where we are. Like, it's foolish to think that someday when we get to heaven, you know, or... 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. Understand before our maker, we're not going to be discussing these things. They're going to be so small and minute in the grand scheme of things. And it's like, oh, isn't that funny how we used to make such a big deal about those things in the moment when really it didn't matter? It didn't matter. Like it didn't, it didn't move the needle one way or the other. But in the temporal moment for us as human natures, again, we've talked a lot about comfort. I think it does because we're just afraid of spinning out of control. And it just, it speaks, it leads to me. It tells me constantly that I need to lean into God more, like you're talking about and have that reckless abandon obedience where you're going to do it regardless. Yeah. And I think it's a really interesting, it's a difficult dynamic. And I don't, I don't want to pretend that I have this mastered, but it is a difficult dynamic because what I see when I read the Old Testament, particularly Deuteronomy, you have Israel on the cusp of entering the promised land. Moses is giving sort of his final salvo and trying to explain to them what this is, what it, what it's like, how it's going to work. And what he consistently emphasizes through Deuteronomy is that obedience needs to be Israel's success strategy. That to the extent that they will obey, that they will just follow God and trust God, God is going to do great things through them. But because God is concerned that he get the glory, and that's not some sort of ego trip on God's part. That is the right placement of glory, right? Because he's concerned about that, because he's concerned that he get the glory and that the nations not look at Israel as some sort of innovative nation that is fantastic, sitting on the hill by their own strength. Obedience is a necessary element. Israel needs to do and align with what God is asking them to do so that the nations see that doing what God asked them to do is an appropriate strategy, that God blesses this, that this is in line and according to God's order. And so this is why we see in something like Deuteronomy 30.20 where God is called Israel's life and length of days. And the idea there is that we may see a number of practical ways to affect the world around us. The trouble is that most of the time we have such an anemic understanding of the world around us that when we start pulling levers, we just screw something else up. And so, right, so what God is telling them is, look, learn, just learn to lean on me. Just depend on me. It doesn't mean they don't have any other strategies. It's not like they're not watering their crops or trying to figure out irrigation or whatever else, right? Like it doesn't ignore the practicalities of life. What it does is it situates those. And it reminds us that even in the practicalities of life, God is the one who is giving us the power to do those practicalities. Our lives still depend wholly on him. Everything we have is gift. And so that idea then leads us back to obedience all the time, all the time, all the time. It doesn't preclude strategy. It doesn't preclude practicality. But what it does, I think

We stay in a world where we pretend that we are doing this in obedience to God when really we're just following our own agenda. And I think, I go back to something Bonhoeffer said. He was giving a lecture called The Church's Debt. Actually, that was the title of his lecture in 1932. And he says this, I'll read the quote. I've got it up here on the screen. Has it not become terrifyingly clear again and again in everything that we have said here to one another that we are no longer obedient to the Bible. We are more fond of our own thoughts than of the thoughts of the Bible. We no longer read the Bible seriously. We no longer read it against ourselves, but for ourselves. If the whole of our conference here is to have any great significance, it may be perhaps that of showing us that we must read the Bible in a quite different way until we find ourselves again. And I love that juxtaposition of against ourselves and for ourselves. I think a lot of times what we're doing is we are doing things for ourselves when the reality is that obedience is in many ways against ourselves. In other words, I think what Bonhoeffer is pointing to is there are always times when we're praying, when we're reading scripture, when we're practicing and doing Christian practices that these things don't serve us or our agendas as we would formulate them. What they're doing is they're coming up against us and chipping off the rough edges so that as we do that, and those things are shaved off, those rough edges are shaved off, we can form more closely to the image of Christ. That's the over against us that he is looking at. It's not a sort of a, you know, a sadie where we're whipping ourselves in the streets or taking on vows of poverty. It's a consistent obedience that drives us to look more and more like Christ. That's why I think it's important. I try to always keep in the forefront of my mind. Actually, I don't have one here, but my skateboard, like everyone always has a signature. They right on top of the grip tape and on the nose of mine, I used to always put he must increase and on the tail, it said I must decrease. And the whole concept of every single day where it says many times in the scripture to die to ourself. That means like the things we want, the things that bring us comfort, the way we want things to happen in a certain timeline. Like it just, it's very fascinating to me because that's something I think I personally, as a, as a dude, as a human being, 44 years old, I will always struggle and wrestle with that on a daily because I want to know how things, you know, I, I like to know what's coming. I like to be able to plan ahead and like know, and, but there's, there's a piece that you can attain and I don't always hit it, but like I was talking earlier, it's really helped me just thinking about that. Like, I can't say that I believe in God and trust in God if I'm going to wrestle with these things each and every day. Go to sleep at night. You're, you're sleeping well, you know, your mind is empty and you're just like, okay, bring on tomorrow. And then the next day something happens in the news or you read something or you just think about something too much and then you just slip down again to where you're, you're not really trusting in God. And that's something I've been convicted of a lot lately. And I think as Christians that, you know, Christian resistance, like you talked about earlier, a way that we can do that and defy the world is trust him no matter what. Like you're saying, I love that analogy of, of, you know, doing it no matter what, even if we know the outcome is not going to be what we want, it's we're still being obedient because that's what we're called to do. And I don't think we take everything currently through that lens because I hear people all the time, well, this is different times. We're experiencing stuff we've never experienced before. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. This stuff happened. A lot of this stuff has happened before we ever were on this earth. You know, it's just, we want to justify it and say, oh, well, it's a little different now because, you know, there's evil that's more apparent. It's in right in front of our eyes. I mean, I, I see some of the craziest stuff people post and say in articles that I've read. And I'm just like, you have to almost be careful what you read and what you put in your mind, because then you can, without realizing it, you can start slipping down that slippery slope, you know? Yeah, I think, you know, there's something to, and obviously I don't think it's any excuse to abandon obedience. So that's not what I'm saying, but I do think there is a different context and that, but we often point to that different context and think excuse to be less than Christlike. That's the problem with the different context when what we really should be doing in different contexts is trying to understand how these different arrangements are ultimately going to impact our ability to be and make disciples for Jesus Christ. And so I was talking, I had the interview yesterday, the show will actually air later with the president of Childcare Worldwide. And I was just asking him, you know, what, how do you see the, what sort of obstacles, I sort of have a good sense of the obstacles that are facing kids in the United States just because I live here, right? There's busy schedules, there's travel sports teams, there's TikTok, I suppose. I don't really know what that is, but you know, there's all these different things that distract kids from becoming and making disciples for Jesus Christ, or at least have the potential to. And his response to me was, it's really water. These little kids in Africa are walking, you know, sometimes two miles with a fairly heavy jug, right? To get water from a river and then carry that water back, that jug back, all full, all the way home. And they have to do that twice a day. And so you just think about, you know, now, is that a necessary distraction? Yeah, I mean, everybody needs water. Certainly more fruitful than TikTok, right? But it's still taking that time away from time these kids could be formed in the image of Jesus Christ. And so I tell that story just to say, you know, different contexts do present different challenges. I think sometimes what I'm concerned about when we talk about American politics is that we think we can get to a context in which the challenges to growing in Christ have not been eliminated. I don't think anyone would say that. But have so diminished that they are virtually insignificant. And I think, you know, there's a way to understand some of the political rhetoric that comes out, particularly on the conservative side, which is to say that if we can just get America back to a more moral environment, that will be a good thing. And the way I read that, and it comes out in a number of different ways, but that this moral environment has fewer problems, fewer obstacles for glorifying God than this sort of insane liberal environment. I would very much caution Christians against adopting that mentality. I'm okay with, you know, a better or worse on this, both, right? If you want to say one's better and one's worse, whatever. I'm not going to argue that point. I don't love that terminology, right? I prefer just to stay with difference. But if we don't believe that different environments hinder us in different ways, we're crazy. And there is nothing inherently Christ-forming in a moral environment than there is in an immoral environment. I think, you know, and you've heard me say this before, Nate, I think in a moral environment, we often settle for wholesomeness when only holiness will do. We can create these contexts in which we are comfortable. And so all the changes that we would prefer to make have already been changed, have already been made. And so now we don't have to make any changes that we would prefer not to make. That is not an over-against-ourselves sort of mentality. That is a for-ourselves sort of mentality. There are certainly environments where, you know, we could envision that there are many changes that we would prefer to have made that have not yet been made. And those become now the agenda, the driving force that animates us as Christians. Also a problem. It isn't just, you know, sort of falling prey to the immorality. It's also becoming obsessed with eliminating the immorality that I think can become a problem. Right. Either one of those problematic. And so all I would say to Christians is this, like, there is no Christian environment in which we are not going to be tested and tempted and in which we don't need to be praying the end of the Lord's Prayer. Lead us not into temptation or protect us as we go into testing and keep us from falling prey to the evil one, would be my sort of interpretive rendering of that last stanza. We're always going to be in an environment that tempts us not to be who God requires us to be. And so there is no utopian space for this. Right. So we may want one vision or the other, but let's be realistic about what those visions are.

and not create some sort of, you know, proto new creation out of them where we don't have to worry about anything because don't sweat it. The government's got it solved. I would call it theological fanaticism. Yeah. And I wonder, too, how much of us have actually really experienced true persecution living here for us in the Midwest in a country where we really haven't been persecuted much for our faith. You might sometimes get pushback on social media, but other parts of the world experience way more persecution than we've ever even experienced or even fathomed or could understand. And so I also keep that in the back of my mind because like you said earlier, we know what happens to America. We know that it's not like the say all end all. You know, we kind of get this inflated sense of security because my whole life it's been pretty smooth sailing. Like I haven't had to worry about stuff that people have to worry about in other regions, other parts of the country, other parts of the world. You know, the color of my skin can be a factor of that. Like there's things that I've not had to experience that other people have. So I just keep that in my mind. Like that is coming because that's what the Bible says. Like we will be more and more persecuted and it's going to get hotter. The temperature is going to turn up. It's going to get more uncomfortable. And so you might as well just make your peace with that now and start preparing now so that you can withstand that better. You know what I mean? That's kind of the silver lining there for me where I've been like, okay, we're here. It's unfortunate and I don't like some of these things, but the reality is it's going to get much worse before it gets better. It's a good time for us to learn dependence because, you know me, man, I'm always prone to the weight training metaphors. So I'll give you another one. When you're learning to weight train, one of the things I used to do with clients who were just starting to lift, you wouldn't hand them dumbbell because they're too unstable. You have to, you actually have to balance them. And so a lot of people, if you just hand them dumbbells for the first time, they're kind of all over the place. They can't hold them steady. It's just a coordination issue. They haven't mastered. So usually what you do is you put them on a machine. Develop some strength, get the motion down, or you put them on a barbell, which is just inherently more stable than a dumbbell, right? You only have to really stabilize front to back, not all over. The general idea is that what you want to do is you want to build up that musculature. You want to build up that strength. You want to build up that coordination and the movement before you move a client to a more unstable environment. Something that's going to be a more difficult exercise. And I think right now what we're going through in the United States, this is great prep. This is our barbell. This is our machine. We can develop strength. We can get some reps in. We can develop some volume, right? We can get good strength and coordination to understand how to depend on God in these moments. It's great preparation for us, knowing what's coming ahead. We're out of this space where everything feels more or less comfortable. I agree with you. I've lived a pretty, you know, my parents were not overly well off when I was growing up, right? Like they weren't, you know, we were squarely lower middle class, if not lower class. And so, you know, I've had those moments where it's been difficult. I sort of have an inkling of how that feels, but at the same time, for most of my life, I've been pretty well off and good. And so I agree with you. I haven't had a, you know, a particularly challenging existence. At the same time, now we're starting to feel a little bit of a pinch. And it's a great time for us not to lean back on our own strength, back on our own understanding, but to learn to depend on God because I always go back to one of my favorite verses during this time, at least in the political spectrum, has been Isaiah 36, six. Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. And I think that if we're depending on the wrong thing, at best, what we can expect is a pierced hand. And so It's Isaiah 36, six. And so we've got to really reckon with that. We've got to wrestle with that and recognize that, look, it's a great time for us to prepare. It's a great time for us to learn to depend on the Lord because at the end of the day, the government is like Egypt, the broken reed of a staff, which will pierce our hand when we lean on it too heavily. If we put too much weight on it, it is going to let us down. In other words, I think we see this in Matthew 10. I wrote about this in Serpents and Doves. Another Shameless plug, Amazon.com for Serpents and Doves. But I do think that these themes keep surfacing because they're really crucial themes. Political participation is fine. Political participation is not a problem, right? But any more than like eating is a problem, right? The act of sitting down to a meal is not a rebellion against God because we should be depending on him for sustenance. That's insanity, right? Even Paul and Thessalonians tells the people that they are to work for their food. The work's not out of the question. So it's not like we're calling for passivity. What we're calling for is a situated understanding of how these things work within the context of giving God glory. And so let's not lean too heavily on the government. Let's not be so overly dependent on the government. Let's lean on God. Let's learn to depend on him. And as we approach this election, let's not go nuts. It's going to be okay. Whoever gets elected in, it's going to be okay. God's still in control. Exactly. And even if our candidate doesn't win, the next logical question to ask is just, Lord, I have no idea what you're doing here, but I'm kind of excited to find out. And I trust you. Yeah. I'm interested. I got to tell you, you keep things interesting, God. This is not what I expected, but okay, let's see what happens. Yeah. I think what's more polarizing about it specifically, if I can say Trump, and we've talked about this before, where people kind of put him right here with God and they call him God's chosen one. They're even saying like him turning his head in the assassination attempt was, they're equating it to something in the scripture with the lamb's blood over the ear and like the whole, like him being some kind of chosen one. I just find it hard to believe that God would wait until 2024 to like show us something that, you know, cause there's been other times in, in, in the world or in mankind that he could have reacted and like chosen a person to do. I just, I think it's a real scary place when we start putting words in God's mouth or we start at like taking the scripture and putting it into a narrative that makes us feel bolstered or okay in a line of thinking and a line of approaching the way we're looking at something or thinking about it. And I see it so much right now that it's, it's honestly like alarming. It's like, man. And then that just feeds the other side and then they go back and forth. It just, it just adds gasoline to the fire. And it's like, and then they lump all Christians that way. There's a, there's a lack of people truly leaning on not their own understanding, not the government, not the way they want it to play out. But there's a lack of Christians truly leaning on God, you know, recklessly, like without abandon, like a hundred percent, like no matter what. And that's been my conviction the last few weeks in really diving into this, reading your book and just kind of trying to make sense of it for myself because it's easy and some days are harder than others. Obviously, like you see more stuff and you're like, man, this is crazy, but it's not crazy to him. You know, it's just crazy to us because we don't see everything. Right. And I think at the end of the day, you know, some of those folks who are saying that Trump is the chosen one or, you know, making these parallels between him and other people. I think that what everybody just needs to stop and recognize is that bad things happen all the time. Good things happen all the time. Bad things happen to bad people. Good things happen to good people and vice versa. Like it's all happening.

We don't always understand. And so, you know, to sort of crown him this early and to suggest that he is some sort of a symbolic victory for Christianity is, I think, a real problem. Because as far as I'm concerned, there is one symbol of Christ, of Christian's victory, and it is Christ. And that victory was complete. It does not need to be supplemented by Donald Trump winning the election. It simply doesn't. And so that's not a comment on who you should vote for. That is a comment on avoiding the subtle idolatry that come along with adding a symbolic framework to this particular campaign. That's what I would be concerned with. Let's not make the Presidency of the United States something that is more than it's supposed to be. Let's leave it in the realm where God has placed it. Recognize whoever gets elected as God's appointed representative to govern within this American system and then watch and see what God is doing. This added element where we're trying to suggest that Donald Trump is the guy and he's the fulfillment of prophecy or fits some sort of biblical pattern is, to me, very scary. It's extremely problematic. I think it's wrongheaded from a biblical perspective. And I think there's a lot of different ways you could go out. I don't even want to mention them here because I think people will take the wrong way. But yeah, I just I don't believe that we can read this moment in history, these happenings that are going on, particularly on such a small scale as a re-institution of a patterning that I would argue has culminated in Christ. I'm not sure that we can see biblical patterns playing out in the history of America that were instituted in the Old Testament, not to this specificity. So that's as much as I'll probably say about that. I would just urge people, you know, read Jeremiah 7. Jeremiah 7 is a fantastic text to sort of get your head around this. There, what you have is false teachers claiming that because the temple is still standing, that God is still with the people of Judah, regardless of what else they're doing. It allows them to authorize and legitimate all of their bad behavior. And God comes down and says, Hey, just let me remind you, I destroyed the temple in Shiloh. It bore my name as well. I'm not at all concerned about this house that I don't even live in. You're my people. You need to be doing what I'm asking you to do. You need to be reforming your ways. And if you're not going to do that, don't look at this temple to do anything. Now, I don't say that as an analogy to America. I say that as an analogy to the church. The church, if there are people within the church who think that getting Donald Trump elected is somehow a legitimation of American way of life or even the American church's way of life, I would just urge them to really meditate heavily on Jeremiah 7. God is not captured by any earthly structure and the human. He is not represented by those things. He works outside of those things. And what he cares about is that we are repenting, that we are following him. I think the first step in repentance for anyone who's a non-Christian is to accept Christ as their Savior. So I don't think this applies to America in general. People get more nuanced on that if they wanted to read my book. But ultimately, what I would say to the church is, repentance, our own repentance, our own confession of sin, our own coming back and depending on God is what is necessary. Not substituting our repentance or our dependence on God for some sort of false symbolic victory of a political campaign. To me, if you're looking for a pattern from the Old Testament that applies to this particular election, I'm going to Jeremiah 7. That's where I would sit it. Yeah. Well, and you mentioned too that, you know, subtle. It's subtle sometimes. But I have straight up read headlines of an article that say, like, Donald Trump is our only salvation of saving America as we once knew it. Or, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but you know what I mean? Like, we've we've seen a lot. Like, it's not, it's not like quiet. I mean, it's blatant. Like people actually believe that. And it's like, that is crazy to me that it would be one person and the way that some people and you know my thoughts and feelings on this. Like, the way that some people kind of make that into idolatry, it's no different than worshiping a golden calf in the Scripture. You know, it's it's taking our eyes off of God and putting it on something else. And we don't really know that that even if we did, if we if God said, this is my chosen one, which he hasn't, but it's just crazy that we got to that conclusion on our own. That people have just made that assumption. Like, it's just, I think it's out of desperation. Let me say this and then we're kind of at the end of the show, so I don't want to keep this going too, too long. But here's what I'll say. You know, when God chooses Nebuchadnezzar as a servant, when he calls Cyrus the Persian, Persian emperor, his Messiah, I don't think that these were necessarily intended. Now, Cyrus does some good things for Israel, but particularly in the instance of Nebuchadnezzar, this would not have been good news. God is going to do something that is going to have deep implication, negative implications for the people of Israel. It's going to take them into exile. And so it isn't as if identifying someone as God's chosen necessarily equates to blessing, to leading us into a promised land. It doesn't equate to that. And so many people can be appointed by God, chosen by God, served as God's servant, what have you. But that does not mean it will turn out, quote unquote, good for us or our nation or anything like that. God is doing something we don't understand. And so even if we recognize rightly that, oh, okay, this guy or this woman is God's chosen, which I think in the best case scenario, Christians are deciding that when they vote, right? They're saying, I think God is choosing this person, right? And so I'm agreeing with God on his choice. 50% of us will be wrong or whatever percentage it is, right? But even in saying that, we aren't, it isn't like we know what's going to happen. We don't know that God is choosing this person to lead us back to some, what I would call fictional pristine moment in American history. It could very well be that he's choosing this person to take us to a deeper, darker place. And so I just think there's a whole lot of problem. Again, that's why I frame it this way, as the symbol of victory, right? You can be right about him being God's chosen, and you can be absolutely wrong about him being a symbol of victory. Those two aren't tied together. And that's where I think Christians, my encouragement would just be, look, win, lose or draw in the next election. If the candidate you want gets elected, the candidate you want doesn't get elected. Remain curious about what God is doing.Remain open to serving the will of God.Remain open to pointing to and glorifying the triune God, because that is something only the church can do.Do not think that you have won something and that now all the problems are going to be solved or that, you know, the stars have aligned, that God is on team.That is not necessarily what this means.It means that you got one right or you got one wrong, whatever. God has installed a new person above. And now we need to be cautious, curious, open, interested in what God is going to do, having appointed a new leader. And now he can do stuff through us. Like we need to be now more than ever, regardless of what happens, the way we can look around, you know, we have spiritual discernment to look at fruit of the way our nation is, the way the world is, the way how we've gotten as a whole, as humankind, further and further from God. So now more than ever, Christians need to take up their cross and be sharing the good news with every single person that they can. And, you know, I mean, we've always we've always had that creed. We've always needed to do that. But now more than ever in a time when people are searching for a savior and they're putting it in the headline as an American citizen, as a person or as an entity or a left or a right or, you know, however you identify, forget all that. Like the most important thing is telling people that the answer is Jesus Christ and pointing people to him. And that means what we're putting on social media, what we're talking about in circles, what we're associating with everything because people that don't agree with you right now, they're definitely going to be watching your life. And if it's not, if it's not going to be pointing.

to Jesus, then we're kind of adding to the problem and not the solution. Yeah. Nate, this has been great, man. I appreciate having this discussion with you. Yeah. We're going to go ahead and close the episode out. We're a little over an hour now, so hopefully people have stuck with us. I think it will be worth their while too. But I always enjoy talking about these things with you, man. Yeah, definitely. Just thanks for being a great conversation partner and we will catch everyone on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everybody. 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. In a world where relationships are easily broken and often discarded, the Rebuilding Us marriage podcast is your lighthouse, guiding the way to hope, restoration, and transformation in Christ. I'm your host and marriage coach, Dana Shea. Join me as we discuss the necessary tools for rebuilding marriages from adversity, betrayal, and disconnection. It's time to reignite love as we rebuild marriages from the ground up. Listen to the Rebuilding Us marriage podcast on lifeaudio.com or wherever you get your podcasts.