God Is Not A Republican (Or A Democrat)

Talking to people who disagree with me politically has gotten hard.

Like, really hard.

Sometimes I feel like the world is going crazy and I don't know how to have a normal conversation anymore.

So I brought in one of the smartest people I know, Dr. Rubel Shelly, to help me figure it out.

He has his Master's and PhD from Vanderbilt. He's been a preacher for decades. And his view on how Christians should engage with politics is refreshing, clarifying, and honestly? A little challenging.

In this episode, we get into it.

Can Christians even be civil anymore? Should Christian principles become law? What's the difference between voting your values and Christian nationalism? Why did Constantine almost ruin Christianity? And what does it actually look like to love someone who votes the opposite of you?

Rubel walks us through Tim Keller's framework, two "red" priorities, two "blue" priorities, and the fifth one we keep forgetting: blessed are the peacemakers.

We talk about the early church dying for their faith. A young woman in Jerusalem choosing baptism knowing her family would kill her. Christians in India being told the law of Christ is higher than the law of the land. And the uncomfortable question I couldn't stop thinking about:

Are we just trying to make Christianity easy?

Because Jesus never made it easy. He told people to walk away from families, homes, and comfort to follow Him. It was never both/and. It was Jesus or nothing.

My biggest takeaway from this whole conversation:

My Christian beliefs matter more than the law of any land I could ever live in. It doesn't matter who's in Congress or in the Oval Office. Jesus is on the throne.

That has to be the guiding principle.

This one's long.
This one's good.
And this one might stretch you a little.

I'm Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes. After a decade transforming marriages at Marriage Helper, I've realized that the greatest tragedy isn't a failed relationship; it's the person who stays stuck and never experiences the fullness of all God intended.

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Transcript

Why Political Talk Feels Impossible

SPEAKER_00 1:28

One of the things that I am seeing becoming increasingly and increasingly harder for me in my life is being able to speak with people who have different political opinions than I do. I'm just gonna be straight up about it. Sometimes I feel like people are going crazy and I don't know how to talk to them in a civil manner. So today's discussion is really more for me and you all get to sit in on it. But today I'm speaking with Dr. Ruble Shelley. He is one of the most smartest, most smartest people I know. He is one of the smartest people I know, and he has his master's, he also has his PhD from Vanderbilt University, I believe it's in Divinity. He's been a preacher for decades upon decades of his life, and he has an amazing view that I have found to be refreshing and honestly, if I'm being honest, challenging at times about how we can be Christians and also engage with politics. My favorite part about the whole conversation, you'll hear at the very end. Let's dive in to today's episode. Ruble, on topics where we disagree with things, especially politically fueled things. How do you think we as Christians should respond? Or should we? Should we stay silent?

Red Blue Priorities And Peacemakers

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Oh the old saw that you can't mix religion and politics, that doesn't work. Um Christian teaching says that your faith has to affect every arena of your life. Uh your family, the way you do business, uh, the way you make decisions and choices in politics. So I don't think the answer is um stay hands off and just say politics and religion, they don't mix. They have to. Um Paul says, what, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10 31. Um politics is one of the things we do. So how do we have uh different opinions and still behave Christianly? I hate to think we're elevating the level of discourse by introducing this word, but we could at least be civil. Um not all people think alike. And that's a revelation for some of us, I think, that if somebody sees a thing differently than I do, either they're not as smart as I am, or number two, they're not as honest as I am. There are a lot of factors that make us think the way we think about any subject, religion, how to do family or politics. And I like the division that Tim Keller um outlined, the late Tim Keller. He said, look, there's a wide range of things about which scripture is very clear. For example, uh respect for life and the protection of life, um, moral codes, especially around um appropriate sexual behaviors. Taking care of the weak. Uh, pure religion is to take care of the widows and the orphans, James says. And then forming a multi-ethnic community that's respectful. Paul says in Christ, there isn't Jew or Gentile, there isn't male or female, there's not slave or free. Well, those are four categories that Keller lists appropriately out of the New Testament. And he said two of those sound very red, very Republican. Yeah, concerned about protection life, uh protecting life, abortion, infanticide, concerned about um moral issues, especially around sexuality, same-sex marriage, things like that. But those other two sound very blue, um, forming a multi-ethnic community, uh, being concerned about human rights, civil rights, um, migrants, immigrants, uh, people who speak other languages who are in this country. Um the issue here is not whether they're in legally or illegally. There are a lot of people who are in here legally, came legally, who are now being deported rather abruptly and cruelly. And then the matter of just taking care of the poor, the widows and the orphans, which is a Hebraism for the people who are most vulnerable among you. Well, those two sound blue, and those are priority issues for blue candidates. Keller makes the point. There was a fifth thing, though, in the New Testament, and that was blessed are the peacemakers. And we need somehow to realize Christians have to choose not between two red issues and two blue issues, and continue to polarize themselves in our churches and in the culture, but we have to integrate that fifth element in. The New Testament did not have Christians going out beating up on people who weren't doing enough, in their opinion, to take care of the poor, or beating up on people that they believed were in violation of certain moral codes. Um you don't take violence into your own hands. You don't you don't go out and impose by criminal civil law and penalty the distinctives of Christian morality. Um you live them and you model them, and you hope that other people catch on to it. So I think Keller was onto something there that that we've missed. And and right now we're so polarized. Um on the red side, yeah. We we want um conservative judges and politicians who will oppose abortion and infanticide and who will say that that marriage should be one male, one female in monogamous relationships. I believe that. I argue for that in books I've written. That and yet others say, but wait a minute, there are so many people who their their children go to bed hungry at night, and there are people who whose children are not uh given the opportunity for an education, there are people who are not making a living wage. Uh do we not have to be concerned about the poor and the sick and the needy, and uh those who are the most vulnerable among us? And shouldn't we care about people who want to come into this country, say, to avoid criminal cartels or avoid persecution for their religious faith out of a an extremist Muslim country or something? Can't we have some legitimate way rather than simply we're gonna close the borders down? Um those four ideas are not mutually incompatible. And there are times that we have done better trying to do all of them simultaneously, even if one or two of them were given priority by an administration or our leader or by a cultural movement. So the idea that we are so polarized as we are now that we can't even talk about it with civility. That's a more fundamental problem than maybe any one of those issues, and it it um sort of closes off the option of that fifth item, which is blessed are the peacemakers. Um you can have a primary concern, say, for um children. I can have a primary concern for certain ethical issues that are current. But we should be able to talk about that, respect each other's points of view, learn from each other, and again, not to elevate from Christian morality, be civil. Civility should be basic to our humanity. Civility is nothing more nor less than love your neighbors, you love yourself. Believe that person is as smart as you are, as concerned as you are, um, as decent as you are in trying to do what's right and treat them the way you'd like to be treated. In other words, they'd like to be heard, listen to their point of view.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Do you believe it's ethical to put Christian principles into the laws of the country?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yes and no. Uh and and that's not an evasive answer. It it's an answer I think I can clarify. There are certain things that are part of just civility, decency, I would even call it intuitive morality. That not only do Christians believe these things, but people of good will who are atheists believe these things. Such as such as murder.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Murder is wrong. Yeah. One of the Ten Commandments is don't murder. You didn't have to buy have to have a Bible, and you didn't have to have the Ten Commandments posted somewhere to know murder's wrong. Uh private property. Uh, if you drive a nice car and I drive a clunker, well, I'm gonna take yours because I like yours better. No, stealing is wrong. You don't have to be a Christian to know that. Um atheists argue that from just the matter of mutual respect within a compact. We we talk about the United States being a compact government that we we form it by protecting each other's mutual interests. Private property is a mutual interest. You don't have to be a Christian to believe you shall not murder, you shall not steal, um, you keep your promises. Okay, so those things are in what we call common law, civil law, in countries that are not Christian countries that that are that have atheistic governments. Now, there are some elements of morality that are distinctly Christian. I don't think we have the right to put those into law, um, even if Christians are the majority in a country, um, which probably is no longer the case in the United States anyway. Um, Paul says, look, we don't have the right to judge outsiders, but we do have to hold Christians accountable to these distinctives of Christian morality, case in point. Um a 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl having sex in the backseat of the car after the football game on Friday night. That's immoral. Um as a Christian, I believe it's wrong. I teach against that. That's to use the biblical word, that's fornication. Should they be put in prison? Should there be should there be a civil law, um, or well, in this case a criminal law, saying, okay, because they broke a moral commandment of the Christian faith, uh, we need to put him in jail for three years and her in jail for either two or four, you know, depending on how patriarchal the culture is. Um married people having an affair is wrong. Um should every person who's ever been guilty of a marital affair be criminalized, brought into a court? Uh, of course, in the early days, uh, in the Puritan days of the United States, they tried that sort of thing. And there'd be a trial, and somebody might be put in the stocks to be humiliated. We we we got past that. Christians believe that's wrong. Christians teach against it, Christians oppose it. And the one that's the hottest issue in our culture right now is uh homosexuality. Um I have friends who are gay. Uh I don't endorse their lifestyle. I can't. I'm a Christian. I believe scripture. Scripture's quite clear about that. That's not a vague issue. But should someone who is gay be, by definition, criminalized for being gay, fined, punished, put in jail? Um the distinctives of Christian morality should not be written into public law, because public law is supposed to protect the rights of everybody, even the people who don't believe that they are bound by Christian morality. So the yes and no answer is: should Christian principles be written into law? Some should, the ones that are common to people who are both Christian and non-Christian, but that we understand you can't have a civil society without this. Murder has to be criminalized. Stealing has to be criminalized. Those have to do with protecting life, property, and the common good. There are any number of distinctives to Christian morality about same-sex relationships, about using God's name in vain. To write those as criminal offenses not only does not respect the common life of the community, where a significant portion are not Christian, and they do not hold those to be morally objectionable or wrong things. And for me to be able to impose that, okay, I take the next step. If you don't go to church, you're criminal. If you don't give money to my church, you're criminal. If you don't support a missionary, where does this stop when you begin to write? And the key term here is the distinctives of Christian morality. There is a core of moral precepts that sociologists, historians have found to be in every culture that we've ever found in the world, including in the deep dark Amazon. And these core ones have to do principally with life and property. No culture has ever been found that said, okay, murder is a good thing. No culture has been found that said nobody should have a right to private property. And anybody should be permitted to steal anything I have that they want and harm me if it was necessary to take it. There's nothing distinctive to biblical morality about these protection of common rights and goods, the things that are distinctive to Christian morality, and that's Paul, 1 Corinthians 8, I think, verse 5. I'm doing this from memory. But uh Paul says, look, it's not the responsibility or right of the church to judge outsiders, non-church members, non-Christians. But he said, we do have to enforce these things, teach these things, and hold people accountable to these things within the community of faith. I think Paul's position was reasonable, and I think it's the position position we ought to take today.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

So how would that actually look? Because I I do believe that many people think and feel that their vote is them trying to live out their Christianity. And so they try to vote for the things that they believe they should do or that should not be done. And they don't want to see the place that they live go. I think a lot of people have a fear of it's gonna go the opposite way, not that you will be called a criminal if you don't go to church, but you will be seen as criminal if you do go, or we're gonna have our religious freedoms taken away from us, right? So what about those who believe no, this is how I live out my church.

When Faith Becomes Costly

Christian Nationalism And Constantine’s Warning

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Okay, two things about that. That's the way the church started. Uh you were criminalized if you would not confess Caesar is Lord. And by the time the New Testament closes and the book of Revelation is being read, the Book of Revelation is not about the so-called end times of what's happening in the world today. The book of Revelation is about the conflict between the oppressive Roman Empire that was beginning to want to stamp out Christianity and Christians who were being urged to be faithful, even if they had to die for their faith under this kind of oppression. In fact, that's the exact statement from Revelation 2.7 be faithful even to death if you have to. Well, it got even worse in the second and third centuries. And in the second and third centuries, Christians were literally run through with a sword, they were beheaded, they were burned at the stake if they would not confess Caesar is Lord. Well, Paul says, now to the world there are God's many and lords many, but to us there's one God and one Lord, and his name is Jesus Christ. Christians died because it was criminal not to confess Caesar as the one person above all to whom you must give allegiance and obedience. Christians, I'm sure some Christians caved, but many Christians died saying, I can't confess that. There's the famous story of a bishop, an elder of the church in Smyrna named Polycarp, who is being threatened with that very thing in the very early second century, 115, 120, something like that. And um he's called into the public courtyard by the Roman official, and because he has been the leader of the Christians, and they've they have followed him and his declaration of loyalty not to Caesar but to Jesus. It's not that I want to be disloyal to Caesar, I'll pay my taxes, but I will not confess him as Lord. Jesus is Lord. They literally had him tied at the stake, and they had the wood around him, and the Roman official said, I'm giving you one last chance. You must curse this Jesus and confess that Caesar is Lord, or I will have a soldier torch this wood and you will die at the stake. And the answer that he gave was, For eighty-six years I have served the Lord Jesus, and he has done me no harm. How can I blaspheme his name and deny him in this moment of testing? And he died. And died horribly. Well, Christians were literally thrown to the lions. They were forced to face wild beats. So that's the first answer I would give. Do we conceive the possibility that even in our lifetimes, and by the way, in some countries it's already that way, in Saudi Arabia it's criminal to be a Christian. It's not in the United States. Suppose it were to become criminal in the United States to be a Christian. We'd be right back where the church was when the church was established. You're a minority culture, you have no influence at the centers of power, you're at the margins of power. And if the people at the center decide you are a threat to them because your loyalty is not ultimately to the state or the leader of the state, the emperor, you become subject to persecution, you lose your civil rights, your property can be confiscated eventually, you could even be killed. If that were to happen, that'd put us right back where the early Christians were. During the time, really, when faith was probably at its purest and the church grew the fastest that it ever has in history. Because this represented something real and authentic and principled, and it called people to an allegiance that mattered. Okay, now to the second part of your question, which is where you started, and a good question. What about Christian people who go to the polls to vote for candidates that they believe will uphold their rights to religious faith, who will support positions that are more aligned with their principles. That's what they should do. But that's very different from this phenomenon that has emerged called Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is not, and this is what I think Christians have always done, we decide who to vote for based on, oh, I think I think they would do what's fair. I think they would do what's right, they would be decent. Um they used to even say they might even model decency. That's maybe, I'm sorry to be so cynical. That that maybe is maybe is not part of the uh of the expectation today. But sure, uh I I vote when I vote. There have been some times of uh in recent elections, I I felt it was not a matter of the better of two, and not even which is less bad. It was just a matter, I don't see anyone here that represents the point of view that I think needs to be upheld in the public venue. So on the assumption that all of us try to make our decisions about the doctors we go to. Um if if one of our children needs therapy for a traumatized somebody who whose principles align with ours. We should do that with our politicians too. But the notion that the church should become a voting block for one party or the other, or that a church should be able to deliver its votes through the pastor's influence to choose whom to vote for. Or let's suppose we get a supermajority, not just in a cabinet, but in the Congress, that could write the distinctives of Christian morality into law and could say not only that atheism is, from my point of view as a Christian, intellectually not sustainable and has potential moral consequences that are negative as opposed to the application of Christian principles that are positive. Would it be right then for atheism to be criminalized? There are some people who want Muslims to be, by virtue of the fact of their Muslim faith, barred from entering the United States. I have Muslim friends, some of whom are far more accommodating to civil conversation with me about Jesus than some Christians who disagree about some technical point in theology. So, yes, all of us, I would hope, would choose a candidate, support a candidate, vote for a candidate that we believe best holds to principles that we value as Christians. But there's no perfect candidate that either party has who represents every view that I would like to be represented. So very often I do find myself voting for not the perfect versus the imperfect, but the 60% versus the 40% agreement that I can find. And if sometimes I can only find 20%, 20% agreement between two candidates, I abstain because the other 80% probably represent things in positions that are either totalitarian and disrespectful toward reasonably alternative views, or some of them in support of views that I believe are simply wrong, not necessarily criminal, but not moral with regards, say, to any number of issues that are distinctive to Christian faith. So that's a yes and no answer. Should Christians decide who to vote for based on their principles? Yes, in terms of the things that promote the common good, realizing that people are part of the common good who are not Christian. And Christian responsibility says, love your neighbor. Paul says, and this is Galatians 6.10, as we have opportunity to do good to everybody, especially to those of the household of faith. So I would want to live in a civil culture where there are laws that, yes, respect my rights as a believer, but respect the rights of the person who's an unbeliever. Or if I'm Protestant and he's Catholic, respects his or her right to be Catholic as opposed to Protestant, or even to be Christian as opposed to Buddhist or Muslim. We've called this classic political liberalism, and by liberal in that sense, we simply mean there's a wide range of viewpoint allowed in this culture, and we will be civil and respectful of one another's rights to hold distinctive views. And we may try to persuade, should try to persuade by intellectual argument and conversation, but we will not attempt to coerce people to a point of view that we may have. Christian nationalism goes way down the road of trying to be coercive with the principles and teachings of the Christian faith on people who are not Christian, not because they're bad people, but because they have different points of view, different backgrounds, they've grown up in different cultures, and to try to coerce them is the sort of thing that, let's jump forward now in that early Christian history. Christians died in the second and third century because they wouldn't confess Caesar as Lord. In 313, there was a Roman emperor named Constantine, who was the first nominally Christian emperor of the empire. And within about a dozen years, Constantine used his position as emperor to make Christianity not only legal, he did that in 313. Christianity had been illegal and you could be persecuted just for holding these views. Christianity essentially became the mandated faith of everyone in the empire. And people were baptized at the point of a sword, and people attended church and paid taxes to the church under mandate from the government. Christian nationalism is only a slightly toned-down version of this, that civil power is used to enforce Christian principles, Christian doctrine, and Christian engagement. That's wrong. It was wrong when Constantine did it. It produced what we call the Dark Ages, where power was used by people who had had no power. Once they got it, they abused it. And they abused it to try to force unbelievers to accept faith, and the church went into tremendous decline. Because if in the second and third centuries to be a Christian meant I may be putting my life on the line, trust me, you became a Christian out of conviction. After Constantine, in the late fourth, into the fifth and sixth centuries, you become a Christian because if I'm not a Christian, I can't sell my goods in the market. I can't have a civil service job with a government. I can't live in relationship to my neighbors around me without being threatened by them if I don't endorse their faith. I don't want to live in that kind of a world. And to think about how unfair that is, think about the occasional Christian, and I've had friends who've done this, they work for multinational companies. And so here's a devout Christian, and he goes to work for six, nine, twelve months in Saudi Arabia, where it's criminal to be a Christian. He can't be seen carrying a Bible in public. If he has a conversation with someone about Jesus, an evangelistic conversation, just a conversation, doesn't even have to be evangelistic until he can go to jail because he has represented this false faith in a country where the Muslim faith controls civil rights under law. I don't want America to be the reverse of that, to where people who don't believe what I believe, or it's a Christian who holds a different view on some doctrine than I hold, that either a Muslim or I could be put in jail because I don't hew the line as to this person's take on doctrine X. So Christians should support things that are aligned with our values that serve the common good. We should not attempt to be coercive with our faith and to use the law either to write the distinctives of Christian morality into civil and criminal law, or to create a culture where people who are not Christian are neither welcomed nor treated with the respect and dignity that the Bible says every human being is to be shown.

Evangelism Without Coercion Or Force

SPEAKER_00 31:46

That friend, I don't know if this was a real example that actually happened, or you're just giving an example, but let either way, someone's in Saudi Arabia, a friend, they are a Christian. Do you think they should tell other people about Jesus?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

When and where they can. Yeah. Um I have been in countries where distributing Bibles was illegal, and I had some Bibles with me and I shared them. Um I did it in very private settings.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

Yeah.

Image Of God And Human Dignity

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Um I I ran whatever minimal risk was involved in doing that. Um I I traveled some in the old Soviet Union, uh, where atheism was an official position of the state, and where um, at least in some places, Bible distribution was not only discouraged and could get you into trouble, it was probably illegal in some settings. Um yeah, the the Christian who goes to Saudi Arabia or certain places in Egypt needs to be who he or she is in that setting. And if someone asks me what I believe, I'm not going to lie and say, well, you know, I'm I believe in Allah. I'm going to say, well, I'm a Christian. Um I believe in the God of the Bible who has become personal in Jesus Christ and who um is the figure of history to whom I pledge my allegiance as Lord, Savior. So, yeah. Is there risk in that? There's risk in it that we should be willing to embrace. But sure. Yeah. The extreme of that, I suppose, would say, well, in countries where they do that, we should go in and and have regime change, and because we have the power, throw them out and put a Christian. No, we could that's criminal under international law, which has largely been formed out of a Judeo-Christian base. Um Judaism did not require that everyone Jews came into contact with when they were the covenant people, chosen people of God. The demand of Judaism was not go out and coerce Gentiles to be Jews. Now they had provisions for proselyticking, even in the Bible. You have a woman like Rahab, or you have a woman like Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite. And in the Old Testament, for seven generations, Moabites are not to be into the assembly in the assembly of the Lord. But when she embraced the faith of her mother-in-law and said, Where you go, I'll go, where you lodge, I'll lodge. Your God will be my God and your people my people. That's a that's a conversion statement. She was welcomed into the community of Israel. Oh, and by the way, both Rahab and Ruth are in the lineage of Jesus of Nazareth. So it's one thing to say, yes, Judaism was a distinct Yahwistic faith, but it was never given the mandate. Go out and coerce others to be Jews. Um, they had provisions for embracing people into their community if they chose to enter it. Christians are in very much the same role, even though Christians are not an ethnic group. In fact, Paul in Galatians 6 calls the church the new Israel that embraces both Jew and Gentile. The New Testament does not say God doesn't love the Jews anymore, he's through with the Jews. God says no, in Christ, everything that was promised to Abraham and his descendants is coming to fruition in Jesus. And Israel now is not a genetic or ethnic posture, it is a faith posture. And all those who have faith like Abraham, whether they're Jew or Gentile, ethnically, racially, they're part of the new Israel of God. So let's get clear about that at the start. But no more than Judaism that was supposed to be light to the pagans and show them the path to God, they were not to coerce people to embrace Torah or to confess Yahweh. Christians are in the same position. We're not an ethnic or racial group, we're a faith community, and it is not our responsibility to coerce anyone to join, become part of, accede to our faith commitments because we have power of any sort, whether it's economic, military, whatever, we are to be like Judaism was. We are to be a community that models faith and is Jesus picked up the language of Isaiah about what the Jews were supposed to be doing. Be lights to the world, be salt in the earth. And if others see that and they want to know why is this happening, there's your opening to talk about Jesus. Oh, yes, be evangelistic, do what you can in print, in preaching, in podcasts, whatever, to advocate your faith. But don't ever, ever try to coerce someone to faith, because if it's coerced, it's not faith. Faith is a choice based on conviction. And at the tip of a sword or with a gun at my head, um things might come off my lips that are not convictions, uh, and that would be the worst thing of all. If someone, and this is what began happening post-Constantine, they became Christians because it just paid off. And I was more social settings were open to me if I'm Christian. They're closed to me if I'm not, if I'm still pagan. So yeah, I'm I'm a Jesus person. They didn't know who Jesus was. Their lifestyle didn't reflect Jesus, they were, but they wanted to sign up because it had advantage. Um, Christianity, let's go back to what I said about the earliest Christians. They were not at the center of power, they were at the margins. That's where Christianity works best. Christianity doesn't need to be at the center of power because what do we say generally about power? It corrupts. What does absolute power do? Corrupts you. Absolutely. The more power Christians get at the center, the more Christian the more tempted Christians are. Constantine is our first case study, and there are lots of others contemporary to our own time. The more power Christians have, the more hateful we can be. Because we can be heavy-handed and we can exclude people that have a right to be included in the conversation. That doesn't mean we have to say their point of view is correct. Dialogue, confrontation, debate, exchange, that's good. But suppose they then get at the center of power and they coerce me to give up my faith. Well, the issue here should never be power, it should be conviction. Christians operate best at the margins. Christianity grew its fastest, and Christianity made its most dramatic impact on the world when faith was pure because Christians were at the margin, and if you embrace this, it must be because you really think it matters. I think there are a lot of things that pass as Christians today, or as Christian today, with a fish symbol or a cross on it, that don't look very Christian in terms of the way people are treated by the folks with those emblems. Um, churches, pastors, evangelists. Think about the scandals around priests and Protestant televangelists who, for greed, for exploitation, for sexual advantage hurt other people. Is that Christian? No. And it should be prosecuted under the full weight of civil and criminal law, which is not distinctly Christian, but which Christians should support. Nobody should get a pass because they did this in the name of Jesus. In fact, in the name of Jesus, things that sometimes get a pass should be repudiated. But the opposite of that does not say, okay, Christians need to be in power where we can decide who should have those positions, who can use those positions, who can be treated with respect and dignity. If you go back to the opening page of the Bible, God creates humans, male and female, in his own image and likeness. And the first responsibility, it seems to me, is for me to recognize the image and likeness of God in you and to respect you for your dignity and worth before God, and to have the right to expect the same thing of you when you see me or when we see a third party, even if that third party has a different skin color. They don't speak our language. They don't embrace faith of any sort, or they embrace a faith that's antithetical to the one I embrace. Still a person created in the image and likeness of God and deserves to be treated with dignity that respects the image and likeness of God that is in that person.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

How do you rectify the complete I can't think of I can't think I'm pro I'm still processing everything you're saying. And also the Old Testament, when the Israelites would go and just annihilate groups of people. How do you rectify that with this?

SPEAKER_01 41:42

The Israelites did not go and annihilate groups of people. One of the most common misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the possession of Canaan by the Israelites, used by skeptics and unbelievers, is to say God authorized ethnic cleansing, mass killings, annihilation of whole populations. The requirement in Deuteronomy is when Moses is telling the people you're about to go into the land, and Moses knows he's not going with them, he'll die, the leadership is being passed to Joshua. The requirement is when you go up against any group, any city, any fortified town in Canaan, this land was not simply being possessed because the Jews needed territory. The Canaanites have been given 300 years to repent of their gross conduct, including, principally including, I think, child sacrifice, very common among the Canaanite religions, and what I would call the most perverse forms of sexuality, incest and rape. Leviticus 17 and 18 talk about the sins of the Canaanites, and Moses tells them, when you go into their land, you can't do the kinds of things they've been doing, or God will do to you what he's about to do to them. When the Israelites went in, they were going in really to be the avenging arm of God against people who would not repent of those evils. They'd been given 300 years to do so. And when they approached any of these cities, Moses required, the Lord required through Moses, before any attack is mounted, you must give them the option of peace. And if they sue for peace, or if a part of their citizenry sues for peace, you cannot wage war against them. But if they are people who, in defiance, uh, not necessarily of Yahweh, the God of Israel, but in defiance of child sacrifice, um, incest, rape, the rape as an instrument of war was very common in defeat enemies, uh, the anal rape of a male who fell in combat. It was a social setting that's obscene even by the most liberal-minded of people today. They are given the option, if you sue for peace and say, we realize those things are wrong, you can't attack these people. For those who say they will maintain their culture's posture, those are the ones you make war against. And then you have these hyperbolic statements, and most of them are hyperbolic in Joshua, that they slew everything that had breath in it in this village or in this city or in this ethnic group, the Amorites or the Jebusites. Two chapters later, the Jebusites are working. Wait a minute. If you slew all of them, how are the Jebusites still interacting with Israel here? Those who sued for peace are allowed to live. The ones who were slain were the ones. So, so a complex answer to a straightforward question. Did the armies of Israel go in as the avenging wrath of God against the Canaanites? Yes, they did. But not for what we think of as ethnic cleansing or the annihilation of an entire population. The law required, number one. One, if they sue for peace, you can't attack those people, set them aside. All of these cultures, they live, even the people in Jerusalem. There were people who sued for peace in Jerusalem when the Israelites came up against that and it was still a Canaanite city. Later, they live in Jerusalem along with the Jews now who've come in to settle it. So the hyperbolic language about destroying everything that breathed, every human that breathed, yes, for the warriors, for the ones who set themselves in defense of the culture that the Lord said, This is so evil and odious, the very culture itself has to be dismantled. The people who sued for peace were given peace. Now, interestingly, in the book of Judges, which follows immediately in the canon of the Old Testament, some of the people who were spared, turned out they probably sued for peace under false pretenses. And the judges have to deal with pockets of people who seduced the Israelites to worship the Canaanite gods, the Baals and the Ashiras, and who still practice, and especially some of the sexual sins of the Canaanites. Apparently the Jewish people were susceptible to our equivalent of pornography and brothels. They were susceptible to sexual temptation too. And so it created problems. But I suppose there are always problems in any culture. And if every inhabitant of the land had been Jewish, there still would have been sins to be dealt with. So annihilation, ethnic cleansing is not what God did with the Canaanites. Those who were persistent and defiant about their evil ways, they fought and made war against them. The Lord gave victory. The people who sued for peace, they were spared. Many others, you find out later in Joshua, they simply moved to other territories because people were coming in now that they could not withstand even if they wanted to. And so some of the people who sued for peace left and lived elsewhere. Others stayed, some of them were assimilated by the Jews, like Rahab, like Ruth. And others perhaps reverted to their old ways and seduced some of the Israelites into it as well.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

I'm thinking about some friends I have in India that live in a very West Bengal area where they are slowly but surely making it illegal to get baptized. And how these people, when they come to faith, the the pastors are saying, like, you have to be willing to die to follow Jesus. Be willing because they're supposed to get something filled out, submit it to the government, have the government approve it. Well, the government's never going to approve that. Not going to approve it. But these people are doing it because the law of Christianity, like our our like the Bible, what we believe, is higher to them than the law of their land. It it seems like the more we've been talking today, a lot a lot of the issues which many of them are complex and nuanced, but we're wanting it to be easy for us to be Christians.

Modern Conversion Stories Under Threat

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Yeah. I can give you a specific case study similar to yours. Um I preached in Jerusalem in a messianic congregation. There are Christians, of course, in Israel. There are Muslims in Israel. But there were probably 200 people in the room. In fact, it was a Sunday. Um a friend of mine and I were there as guests, and we were both asked to speak. And at the end of the service, a young lady, I would say 20, 22 years old, presented herself and wanted to be baptized. Now it's not illegal in Israel for Christians to baptize converts. But she explained her situation to the group, including these two Americans who were there with them. She had begun learning about Jesus from some of the people in this messianic congregation who attended college where she was. They socially got to know each other as friends, found out she's Muslim, they're Christians, they have conversations. She begins reading the New Testament. Her father and brother and mother learn that she's been having conversations with Christians when they find a Bible, it may have only been a New Testament, I'm not sure, but at least Christian literature in her possession, in her backpack at home. They beat her to within an inch of her life. She had to be hospitalized and recovered. And they told her, if we learn that you have ever been in conversation with these people again, if you ever let us find you with Christian literature in your possession again, you'll get worse than you got this time. And specifically, if you were ever to be baptized, which in any culture, that's that's a dividing line. Yeah, that that's where that's an entrance right into the Christian faith. If you were ever to be baptized, we will kill you. Honor killing, it's called in those cultures. Some in India and Muslim countries, other places. She was there that day and she told that story and was bawling as she told the story. And she ended by saying, I have come to believe in Jesus, and I am here today to be baptized. I do this knowing that I will never again see my mother or my father or my brother, and that if I have any family, it will be, and she pointed to the group, it will have to be you who are my brothers and sisters in Christ. Um I I don't I don't understand that. I I I never had to make that kind of a choice. I I grew up in a godly Christian home. I mean, my baptism was celebrated. I I it was I was never threatened. She accepted Christ and specifically was baptized, not because it was criminal, but because in the context and culture of her family, they would be duty-bound to an honor killing. Um she's so far as I know, she's still a Christian and still alive, but with the understanding from that day forward, she had to hide from her family and she had to be protected from them because their commitment was. Our understanding of our faith means we have to kill you if you accept Jesus. So, yeah, uh, whether it's your friends in India or this anecdotal case where I, I mean, it was not my sermon or Max's that convinced her that day she needed to be a Christian. She'd been reading with some young people uh in that church. But she made a sacrifice that day that while I respect, admire, uh I don't understand because I I've never been under that kind of coercion. Nobody's ever had a gun at my head and said, if you say Jesus is Lord, I'll blow your brains out. Um, you know, maybe I could say, okay, it's small, take a shot, maybe you'll miss. But uh uh in in seriousness, you have to say, I suppose nobody knows until they're in that situation exactly what they would do or how brave or how cowardly they would be. But I know how brave she was that day.

SPEAKER_03 53:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

And she said, um, Jesus means more to me than my life. I think he does to me. But I've never been put in the situation where it was literally a choice between accepting Jesus and having my my family basically issue a death warrant against me if I do that. Early Christians understood that. Today, I I I think your analysis is right. We want faith to be easy. We do not want Christianity or whatever we embrace. We don't want it to hurt, and we certainly don't want us to put uh want it to put us out of step with the larger group around us. I want to be accepted. Uh I'm I'm I want to be compliant enough that I can get along and be friendly. Well, some things you can't be compliant and you can't be friendly. Uh you have to take a stand based on what is principled and right. And when you do that, uh you know it's genuine if in fact there is a price to be paid. And you serve notice not only that you're willing to pay it, but I told the story earlier of uh the the bishop who was burned at the stake rather than deny faith. Um it's one thing to say, I think I could do that. It's another thing to say you're stepping into a situation where you might have to do that. It's another thing to actually take that bold step. Early Christians did, and um Polycarp died for it. This girl may someday die for it. Uh do I want things to change so radically in Western culture in France and Europe and the United States that that we would go to jail for being Christian? I don't want that. But is it conceivable that it could happen? Twenty years ago I'd have said, of course not. Um I don't know. Um there are places in the world that once were Christian, where that now is the rule. I I can't predict the future. I simply know what faith is supposed to mean. Uh be faithful even to the point of dying for it, Jesus tells these people at Ephesus. Um, and I'll give you your crown of life.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

So But in the pursuit of us trying to keep the the let's just say America, America, the either keep America the way we want it or get America the way we want it, we are killing relationships with others.

SPEAKER_01 56:33

Have you noticed? Yeah. The the the red-blue political divide is so sharp.

SPEAKER_00 56:40

So sharp.

Church State And Public School Prayer

SPEAKER_01 56:41

That Thanksgiving meals not only are unpleasant in some families, some people don't show up for them. Christmas events, birthdays, weddings. People leave churches. I know. People leave churches because they deem this church too red or too blue. And they choose their church not on the basis of Calvinism or Arminianism or its views on um the Trinity, but on the basis of perceived political bias within the group. Um my argument is we should not have red and blue churches, we should have purple churches. I guess purple is what you get if you mix red and blue. Um I'm a classic independent in terms of always have been. I've I've voted for Republican candidates, Democratic candidates. The person that I believed, I've never voted a straight ticket that I could recall ever in any election. This person, this person, this person, I think more nearly would do what I think needs to be done. But the idea that within a church, you would not be welcomed if you could not vote a red ticket or a blue ticket is it makes me wonder if it's a church. Because if in a church Paul says that there's neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, I wonder if he would not have added uh right or left-wing politics. People come to different points of view, even out of their cultures. Females probably are more inclined to some of these issues being priorities to them, protecting children, than men might be about taxation uh by this party or tax breaks. People come to their political views and the candidate they think they want to support for a variety of reasons. And even if I think you're dead wrong to support John Doe, and I'm going to support Bill Brown, that shouldn't affect the fact of what I am obligated to see in you. You're created in the image and likeness of God, and for that reason alone, you deserve to be respected and treated with dignity. And you have the same obligation to me. And if I want that of you, oh, now we're into the Second Commandment stuff and golden rule stuff. Treat others the way you'd want to be treated. Do unto others as you want. Well, if if I hold a view that you happen to disagree with, do I want you to be bludgeoning me for my lack of intelligence, my moral compromise, and my uh worthlessness as a human being, people are doing that in the name of politics these days. Name-calling starts at the top and drifts all the way down. That somebody's just dumb, somebody's stupid, somebody deserves the worst of possible fates to disagree with me on or to hold a view that's different from the view I hold. Having a deep conviction is one thing, being passionate about a belief is one thing, but being so disrespectful to another human being that if you disagree with me, I can berate you, I can um denigrate you to other people, I can slander you, um, and that in the name of Christ. No, no, no, no, no. Churches should be the one place where the ultimate loyalty is never to any nation state, it's to the kingdom of God. And when Jesus is before Pilate, and Pilate wants to know, but they're reporting that you say you're a king. Jesus says, Well, uh I'm not going to deny being a king, but what you don't understand, I'm not the kind of king who's a threat to Emperor Tiberius or even to you, Governor Pilate. My kingdom's not from this word. My kingdom doesn't derive from what you think of as kingdom. I don't I'm not out for land. I don't have any armies. Um this is a kingdom of righteousness and joy and peace, to use Paul's definition of what the kingdom of God is about. And um we would serve Rome well. I've already been teaching my followers. Yeah, pay your taxes. Uh, that that's that's your responsibility under the law. Treat your neighbors well. So Pilate, he didn't get it. Um we ought to be smarter than Pilate. Uh, and in our churches, we ought to understand America is not the kingdom of God. America is not a Christian nation. It never has been, it never will be. America is a contract of citizens formed with the pledge and our founding documents to respect people of different religious points of view or of no religious point of view, and they would be welcomed in this culture and they would be protected within this culture, and that the country itself, the government, would never seek to establish religion. And that establishment principle doesn't mean that the government would not be welcoming to religion. An establishment of religion means the government will endorse the Baptist religion. Everybody has to embrace that, or the Baptist religion gets special favors that nobody else can get, or the Roman Catholic or the Church of Christ, or the Presbyterians, or no, that there will not be any established church. There will be no favored church, nor will there be a disfavored church. Everyone will have the right to be uh to have a place in the culture. Your beliefs may be different. We will protect the rights of all of you to hold your distinctive beliefs, but also implicit in that we're not going to allow any one of you to come to the front of the room and take over the government and coerce others to your point of view. One of the things, and boy, I can get in trouble with this one. I've I've never favored um prayer in public schools as a mandated part of school life. Uh, because in a culture like ours, suppose I'm a Protestant kid and there's a Catholic teacher, and the the prayer that we're taught to pray is a prayer to Mary. Well, that wouldn't go over well with Baptist Church of Christ and Presbyterian people. Well, what about the child in the room? And let's say there's only one. How many need there be? And out of 24, there's one or three or five, and their parents are atheists. Do I feel sorry for those children? Do I hope those children will run into Christians? Yes. But those one, three, or five parents should their child be subjected to or coerced to prayer? Well, suppose the teacher is Muslim and I'm Christian? Should should I be so what's fair for the goose is fair for the gander, right? If if we are going to have anything resembling mandated prayer in public schools, um then who decides what kind of prayer? And um can we accommodate in a multi-ethnic culture the people who are not not just Protestant and Catholic, but Muslim and Christian or Jewish and Buddhist, whatever. Well, the answer to that's no. So what is the answer? The answer is it was never the responsibility of public schools to inculcate faith anyway. That's my job as a parent to our three children. Uh that's my that's my wife's job. That's our family's task. That's why we support a church, that's why we are part of a church, that's why we're active in that church's life. That's why we take our kids to that Sunday school. This is education in the common public arena. This is the inculcation of faith given our commitments and what we understand the Bible to be teaching us to do. So we have so failed in maybe basic civics. In the seventh grade, I was taught this distinction between church and state, uh, which again is in the founding documents. There will not be an established church in the United States as there had been in Europe. That had created all kinds of problems, nor, on the other hand, will there be the disallowing of a person to have no faith at all. We we will be the government will have to be neutral on those things. Should be. And Christians should not elbow themselves into positions of power to where once there they say because we know this is right, this is what we will require that everyone do. From the standpoint of Christian faith, one does not do right because he or she has been coerced. One does right because I believe this, and based on my commitment to following Christ, I will do this. Done as coercion, it's it's not a virtuous thing at all. It's a concessive thing to power.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:27

So how would you recommend talking to when you feel deeply convicted about something, about an issue, and someone you love disagrees with you? How would you recommend handling that conversation with truth and grace?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

Aaron Ross Powell The way you and I have had this conversation, uh, with moderated tones, with um both speaking and listening, with saying, hmm, I get that, or hmm, I'd never thought about that. Um let me have some time to think about that uh and let's pursue it. So in other words, talk about it the way you'd talk about buying a new car. And suppose you champion Ford's and I champion Chevrolets. Um how should we talk about that? Well, you're stupid if you don't drive the kind of car I drive. You just don't understand about horsepower, do you? You don't understand about economy. You don't understand about horse.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:26

I I don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:26

Yeah. Okay. Well Probably neither of us does. And we go and buy the car that, you know, it's the best price on the on the given day. So uh uh is buying a car as important as a faith commitment? Of course not. But the the issue is in in the Jesus says he that's faithful in little is faithful in much, and vice versa. Okay. That's true with regard to the basic issue we've been discussing in this podcast, which is civility. Um there is no requirement in my understanding of Christian faith, or I think in any reasonable reading of biblical literature, for if I disagree with you about Trinity, or I disagree with you about baptism, or I disagree with you about worship, for me to berate you, for me to insult you, for me to malign you and strip you of your dignity as a human being, or for me to tell other people she's ignorant and stupid and and mean, stay away from her. That doesn't address the issue. That's what we call poisoning the well in logic class. I haven't responded to any reasonable point you've made. I've simply maligned you as a person to say, I don't believe anything you say because I don't like you. And I won't, I won't, I won't hear you. Um That is the beginning of war. That's why we have wars historically. That's why we're having a war while we're talking. Um we used to use a couple of words that are hardly in the public vocabulary anymore. Statesman or statesperson, perhaps. The word ends politician. Statesmen were people who, whether Republican or Democrat, could say, for the good of the country, we need to come up with a way to resolve this problem. Today, red and blue, Republicans and Democrats, friends of yours and friends of mine, are so polarized, they're not they're not willing to talk about a common ground principle. I'm not compromising anything, I believe. You don't have to compromise a basic principle to say, here's common ground that we could live together in. You have to do that in government. Otherwise, you have to coerce people. And I don't want to coerce, and I don't want to be coerced to a point of view. I want a fair playing field. Uh I want the right to argue the case that I believe is true about religion, about politics, about Fords and Chevrolets. I don't want the right to force you to vote the way I'm going to vote, go to the church I'm going to go to, or buy the kind of car that I'm going to buy. That's just not right. It is me taking away your freedom. And I resent it even more if you're the one who has the power and you're telling me I have to vote the way you're going to vote, I have to go to the church you choose, and I have to drive the kind of car you've picked out. You don't have that right. You shouldn't have that kind of power in my life. I shouldn't, and you and I shouldn't have that right in a third party's life. So what do we do? We revert to what I thought most of us understood this this country was about. We're a free society, and in a free society, a lot of people are going to make choices I don't agree with. We're just that stinking free that somebody can be wrong. Duh. I might be the one who's wrong. But I want the right to be wrong if that's the best conclusion I can reach, and that's the conviction I have today. Now, I I think you'd be doing me a favor to engage me in respectful dialogue. But if I'm dead wrong about X and you simply write me off and insult me and call me three names as you leave the room, you not only haven't helped me, you've probably embittered me to where I would never be willing to listen to your point of view. And even if I realized mine was wrong, I'm not going to give it up because you've insulted me and you have stripped me of my dignity as a human being and insulted my intellect. That's what we're doing in the culture. We are so polarized. We don't talk, we scream. We don't have respectful dialogue. We dig in our heels and fight. We do not debate principle. We insult the opposing person. There's nothing Christian about that. Um there's there's nothing civil even or decent about that. I hope we're going to outgrow it, but we're so deeply steeped in it right now, it's going to take a while.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

How would we outgrow it?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

Well, maybe some conversations like this help a little bit. Maybe somebody listens in who realizes, yeah, I probably was a little bit too strong yesterday when I told my neighbor, I don't see how anybody with two eyes and half cents could hold your point of view. Maybe I need to go back and apologize. Please do. Yeah, I mean, fourth graders used to talk that way. Uh in fourth grade, I'm sure I did. Tommy Sasser and I would disagree about something and we'd wind up insulting each other before we'd go play baseball after school. But we'd go play baseball after school. Fourth graders can do that. Adults ought to be better than that. Uh whether we play baseball or maybe as adults, a round of golf. We should not at any point in the day, because we disagree, do what Tommy and I did in fourth grade, a string of insults. Uh, or in the fourth grade, until Ms. Whaley caught me, it wasn't just insults sometimes. Uh I use language that today I wouldn't use. In fact, I hope I don't even remember the words now. But Ms. Whaley heard me and she said, Young man, if I hear you use that word one more time, I'm going to tell your mother, help me clean up my mouth pretty quickly. I don't know who's gonna, I don't know who's gonna tell us in this culture. Who's gonna tell our leaders? Who's going to tell our opinion leaders? I'm gonna tell your mother if you don't stop talking that way, if you don't quit leading with insults, if you don't quit leading with swear words. And the coarseness of public dialogue in this country. Um in formal speeches by political leaders, language that Ms. Whaley on the playground would have reported me to my mother for using. It's used now on the evening news because they're simply playing back the speech that was made earlier today by our leaders at some state, community, or national level, and they're using language that I don't want my children and grandchildren to use, and yet it's the language our leaders have chosen. They've coarsened the public culture by that, and that gives further justification to take the next step. If I can insult you, I can also mistreat you. And if I can mistreat you, uh, I can take the next step. Um I can I can somehow ban your voice from being heard because you're saying things that that that disagree with either my mandate or the majority point of view. Christianity is not the majority point of view in the world today. Never has been. It may or may not be the majority point of view even in American culture now. Um if if I value my right as part of a minority culture, I've got to value the other person's right who's Latino or or African American or or whatever. Let it be by skin culture, by geographic background. Our culture has said we're a melting pot, we we welcome people from all backgrounds, and we've stopped doing that. We want to be monolithic. Um cultures have tried that uh in the ancient world um and in the modern world. It's never worked. Um and it's not gonna work today. It we've already been set back a hundred years. Uh it may take longer than that to correct it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:31

What I hear you saying is we have to live, as Christians at least, differently. Set apart, treat each other's treat each other differently, consider ourselves as part of a I mean this world is not our home. We are not citizens of we are citizens of heaven before we are citizens of America.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:55

And Lordship is not confessed to any human leadership. Jesus is Lord. Yeah, um, I mean Jesus simplified it for us. You know, I I would I would love it if I had taken college classes where undergraduate or graduate level, the first day of class, the teacher said, okay, your final exam is going to have two questions. And by the way, I'm going to give you the answers today, make a note. Sort of what Jesus did. Well, what are the great commandments? What is the greatest one? He said, really, it all boils down to two. And the first one is love God with all you are with all that you are, heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second commandment, really, that's just the flip side of the first. If you love God, treat the person in whom God has placed his image as your neighbor. Love them. Hmm. That's the final exam, and we've already been given the answers. Uh I think we should practice between the start of the course, the day we're born, and the day the final exam is given, um, judgment day. Um, and uh if if we love God, we can't we can't keep mistreating his children. Um and we can't um not care about the folks who are hurting, um, the people are fleeing persecution from the drug cartels in South South America, um, or the people in the inner city of some of our own country that are being vilified, uh, written off, not given a chance. But at the same time, we cannot compromise um not just the distinctives of of Christian faith, but we can't compromise basic moral principles. So it's not a choice between two, which is the way, well, this is red and this is blue. No, let's be purple. Let's say uh we are we're going to respect and uphold the law. We will insist that people enter the country legally, we will insist that people who are citizens of a country obey its laws with regard to greed, with regard to paying taxes, with regard to the way they treat their neighbor, criminal behaviors. But but we're also going to take care of the wid and the orphan. And and we are going to be peace seekers and peacemakers rather than power brokers. I want enough power to coerce you, you took collectively, we want enough power to exclude them. No, no, no. That's what we're doing right now. That's become the vogue of the last decade or so. Um we have to we have to get back to something that, yeah, it's Christian, loving your neighbor as you love yourself, but every major philosophical and religious system in the world has some version of the second commandment or what we call the golden rule. Um Jewish rabbis used to say, don't ever do anything to anybody else you wouldn't want done to you. It's called the reverse golden rule sometimes when we talk about it. Confucius talked about it. Communism even had versions of this. The golden rule is the is the basic standard of how a civilization can endure. And if we can't reestablish the notion that the person across the table, across the room, across the divide politically, is as valuable as I am, has as many rights as I have, uh, has the same privilege of place to speak to the issue as I have. Even if we never come to agreement, just the fact that we can treat each other with that much civility allows us to continue to function. If it is the continued accumulation of power until we can shut the other side down, we're going to self-destruct. And it's not going to take long for it to happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:08

Dr. Rubel, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:10

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Kimberly. Thanks for the conversation.

Final Takeaways And Challenge

SPEAKER_00 1:21:14

Great conversation. I could keep going, but at some point we have to end. I appreciate it. Maybe we'll do it again sometime. 100% When it all boils down to it, my key takeaway from this entire conversation is that my Christian beliefs matter more than the law of any land that I could ever live in. It doesn't matter who is in Congress or who is in the Oval Office because Jesus is on the throne. And that for me has to be my guiding principle. How can I live as a Christian first, no matter what country I may live in? That can be hard because here's the other thing. The most challenging part for me of this whole conversation was thinking about if I knew that I could face nearly certain death by being a Christian, would I still have faith like I do now? And I hope my answer to that would be yes. But there are people in other countries that their choice for baptism and to follow Jesus is honestly inspiring, isn't even a strong enough word. I admire those people and their conviction and their faith because that's what it's all about: conviction, personal conviction, sharing that story with others about how Jesus has changed my life, how Jesus has changed your life, and for that to lead other people to repentance and to conviction of their own, not coercion. But that comes from not wanting to stay safe and not wanting to just live in a world or country or society where Christianity is easy. Are we just trying to make Christianity easy so it's easier to follow Jesus? Because when we look at the scripture and look at the gospels, Jesus told many people to do very hard things in order to follow him, to walk away from people they loved, from things they loved, from places they loved in order to follow him, knowing it was going to divide families and divide countries and divide loyalties. That's never been the option. It's never been the option of both and it's Jesus or nothing. And for me, I want it to be Jesus above all. Jesus or nothing else. I hope you loved this episode. Leave comments, share it with someone. It was a long one, but it was a good one. Until next week, stay strong.