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The Biblical Anarchy Podcast was created by Jacob Winograd as a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute, with the purpose of making the case for a free society and decentralized governance based on Biblical principles of limited authority and imitating Christ’s example of the leader/servant. If we render unto God what is God’s, we cannot bow down to Caesar or render anything unto him except that which he deserves. The podcast consists of exploring different Bible passages, anarchist theory, Austrian Economics, and finding the connection and harmony between them.
The Biblical Anarchy Podcast is part of the Christians for Liberty Network, a coalition of shows that promote human flourishing by spreading the message of liberty. Find other shows at christiansforliberty.net
[0:01 - intro] If Christ is King, how should the Christian consider the kingdoms of this world? What does the Bible teach us about human authority and what it means to love our neighbors and our enemies? Before we render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, let's know what it means to render unto God what is God's. This is the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, the modern prophetic voice against war and empire.
[0:32] Hey, everyone. Jacob here. Glad to be back with you guys. Sorry about the long hiatus there. I will be planning an episode at some point to, I guess, talk more about my, I don't know, life changes, I guess. I don't know if I'm going to do it actually on the Biblical Anarchy podcast. I might just do it, I might do like a live green room and publish it as a bonus episode of the podcast. Suffice to say that I will be back to trying to do somewhat of a normal release schedule I don't know that it might be every other week or just once a month for now i'll probably be more active on the green room, after this episode airs I think I have two episodes that are going to air which are episodes I had recorded and just never gone back and like completely finished I think there's a couple interviews that just need to be finalized and published and they're on evergreen topics for the most part I think the only thing that might that I was worried might be dated in one of the conversations was we talked about war with iran and I guess i'm not happy that we're still, involved in a war in iran but at least the conversation about the war in iran and the one episode will still be fitting since we're still at war with iran anyway.
[1:48] What I want to talk about today is somewhat related to, I guess, what I've been doing the last three months. I've, you know, it's always good to go and touch grass, right, what we talk about on social media. And it's good to just take little sabbaticals sometimes. And I think that the last several months of me was sort of a forced sabbatical in one way. I was working hard for my family and career changes and stuff like that, but I was taking a bit of a break from just libertarianism and social media and all that. And to be honest, there was part of me that was kind of like, you know, I don't know, would my life be simpler if I just kind of walked away from that world? Because in some ways it would be easier, right? I'd have more time with my family, which is good. I would, you know, I could just not get into political debates all the time and in some ways it's it's it's kind of.
[2:49] There's a weird like double-edged sword to podcasting which is on one hand it's kind of enjoyable to go out there and advocate for ideas it's also exhausting because it comes with friction and pushback and there's a bit of a i, don't know I guess just a bit of a frustration that comes with that especially as you grow older and mature and I have less patience maybe than I used to in some ways because my time is just more precious it's more scarce, you know everything in life is scarce though and we always have to in a very mosesian sense, everything we do is basically we have decided the thing we're doing is more valuable than other things we could be doing now that can be taken into like an absurd way because they'd be like, well, I mean, you know, if I'm watching a movie, does it mean that I value watching the movie more than I do reading my Bible? I don't think it should be taken to that kind of reductio ad absurdum level. I think that we are beings who were created to worship God in many ways. And worshiping God can come in the form of spending time with your family, enjoying beauty, enjoying culture, enjoying entertainment, relaxing, sleeping, or even working hard, right? And serving others.
[4:13] But definitely, we always have to evaluate the trade-offs and the costs. And I i've been thinking about we obviously released and I have a copy here in front of me, our new edition of faith seeking freedom second edition i'm now on the author page the the last on the author page or author author listing here and, the a lot of great content in here I don't want to spoil it all but there was a question that I helped write and this is in the chapter on Christian nationalism, and I want to read this and kind of riff on it a little bit just to kind of get the episode going. This is question 219. How should libertarian Christians respond to the rise of Christian nationalism?
[5:02] Christian nationalism urges that there is no such thing as neutrality, that if we oppose the left forcing its values onto our country, the only alternative we have is to force Christian nationalism upon our neighbors instead. The libertarian Christians are suggesting a third way. We don't believe that every aspect of Christian ethics should be forced onto others. God has circumscribed the role of governance to the performance of only the functions which it is suited and ordained for. Beyond the edge of those functions, freedom must flourish. If it does not, force will replace discipleship and our ability to evangelize for Christ with sincerity and integrity will be undermined. Libertarian Christians promote these values by encouraging engagement in traditional forms of advocacy, like voting and activism, as conscience allows. But we must also speak clearly about a better way, one modeled by Jesus, who chose persuasion, service, and sacrifice over coercion. Following the insight of.
[6:08] Economist Ludwig von Mises, that every action we take comes at the expense of another that we didn't take, We must recognize that seeking political power displaces more faithful approaches like preaching, discipling, and persuasion. The early church transformed the world not through law or empire, but through radical love, servant leadership, and bold proclamation of the gospel. Choosing force over freedom doesn't just distort our politics, it reshapes our hearts. It turns us, or it trains us, to see our neighbors as threats to overcome rather than souls to love. We must not only refute the theology of Christian nationalism, but expose the high spiritual and societal costs of its methods. And I remember writing this, helping to write this answer with Cody Cook, my fellow co-hosts and members here at LCI. And we, you know, we come from different denominational backgrounds and persuasions. In a lot of ways, we're sometimes diametrically opposed in some of those convictions. I'm coming from more of an Anabaptist conviction and background. And mine is more informed by a reformed perspective. But on this Christian nationalism stuff, we found a lot of agreement. And.
[7:36] This is not just an insight about talking about Christian nationalism, right? It's an insight that I think applies to all of our life. And this is sort of why, in a way, there's an expression that goes around that everything is politics or everything is economics. Well if you understand and like the the beginning of our book talks about how politics isn't just defined in like this more modern sense of just voting and, laws being passed and things like that but like politics is in a sense like the idea of like everything that people are doing together in society and, economics is as misa said it's the study of human action and like what humans value And, why and how humans will choose and value some things and actions over other things or actions. And I don't know that Christians are doing a good job right now at sort of taking stock of what we're valuing. I and that goes in two ways it cuts in the first way I think in the way that I was intending to talk about it in this chapter on Christian nationalism and.
[8:56] That I wrote with Cody, where there's the people who think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Like, obviously you can, right? But they kind of stretch that beyond what that expression meant to be. I can be a good father and a good employee at the same time, right? You can be a good father and a good husband at the same time. I don't know that I can be a good Christian and a good Muslim at the same time to maybe like demonstrate a very extreme example where like, well, there are some things you actually can't do at the same time, right? Like we should establish that as a baseline. There are some things you can do at the same time, two things that can be done simultaneously. And there's plenty of things, pairs of things that are contradictory. You know, I can't be a good adulterer and a good husband at the same time almost by definition.
[9:50] I, I can't be a good, I'm trying to think of other contradictory ones. I can't be a good criminal and a good police officer at the same time. Although I don't know, there's, there's like a twisted way to take that libertarian sense where you could just, you know, you could say the police often do act criminally, but I think you get my idea, right? You there are there are things that are mutually exclusive in terms of evaluations of the categories of our actions or our identities and, when it comes to and I had this conversation on a podcast a couple years ago now I think.
[10:30] Eschatology matters and I forget the guy's name I think it was matt but I could be wrong it was a good guy I had a great conversation with him i'm just i'm horrible with names. So if he listens to this, I hope I don't offend him by forgetting his name. But he asked me a question towards the end, which, I kind of rejected the premise of because he asked, well, like, what if we just can use political power to promote the good and preach the gospel? And like, what if we're doing all the Christian nationalist stuff, but we're keeping the main thing, the main thing? And I just sort of, I gave like a long-winded podcast answer because that's what you do as a podcaster but then I ended by saying like in a nutshell I just, you can say what if we can walk into bubble gum at the same time but I think this is an instance where you can't do these two things at the same time and it's because of.
[11:24] Like think about what it takes in resources and time to engage in that much political action to carry out a Christian nationalist agenda. And I guess there is division of labor. Like not everyone is going to be engaged in the political activism.
[11:44] But gaining power and holding on to power starts to take more and more and more, time and resources. And it tends to also come with more and more compromise. As much as I'm concerned with the rise of Christian nationalism, I also recognize that Christian nationalism is a minority and not able to take over the country. But Christian nationalists can join in coalitions with other radical groups on the right and.
[12:17] And can definitely influence political parties and movements and religious movements and churches on the right in ways that move them closer to, you know, their stated goals and ideas. And so insofar as that goes, if you're continuing to make the goal that we have to reject the idea of or, the idea that if we reject that the public square can be neutral, that must mean that means we have to take over the public square by force and impose our worldview on it. That is a black hole of time and resources that you will never stop doing. There's never a mission accomplished. It's hard to even know how to measure success in that way.
[13:09] And there there's also I mean we could get into a whole conversation about time preference and incentives but i've done that before I don't want to get too, high level in this podcast episode, but I there's also the cost beyond just time and resources that it takes there's, the there's the limitation of our minds and I i don't think even with the help of the holy spirit I think that.
[13:40] We as beings are not capable of, even though we're made in the image of God, we're not capable of doing some things that God is capable of doing. Like, God is capable of being all-loving, and it's not in conflict with the fact that he will judge sin, and he will judge sinners who are not in Christ. I think that... Part of why we're told to turn the other cheek and why we're to leave vengeance to him, it's not a pacifistic command so much as it is a recognition that we're really bad at carrying out even just like limited justice. Trying to carry out vengeance against sin and wrongdoing without being darkened in our own way, because we're going to be doing it from not a place of a pure commitment to justice, but we're going to tie in our own selfish ambitions and greed and ego and pride, and desire to inflict pain. It's going to come from a mixture of convictions and emotions, and some of those are going to be dark. and.
[14:53] Part of that then is, as I wrote, helped, me and Cody wrote in that answer there, is it is hard to continue to view your neighbor as someone you're called to wash the feet of and, to view with the heart of God, while also simultaneously viewing them as your political enemy. Now i'm not suggesting we put our heads in the sand and not recognize that people can be politically, adversarious in a way that they can be politically that they can be political threats in a sense but, when you engage in fighting people in the ways that the world fights you're you're no longer going to be I think or it's going to be very hard at least to be acting in the spirit when you're fighting in the way the world fights. Like, I don't think that what I'm saying is not that Christians don't have political enemies, but I don't think we overcome our political enemies through politics, not primarily. And again, I'm not an absolutist on pacifism, I'm not an absolutist on politics. I think that there can be faithful ways to engage in politics and to engage in self-defense. But it feels like just too easily Christians fall into, oh, it can be permissible to, it's always advisable and...
[16:21] Almost normative to pursue those routes. I don't think that it's like, if I normative, I just mean that like, it's like the primary general route that we're going to do, right? Like you have normal, think about it this way. There are normal routes you take to go to work. Now, if that road gets closed, there are detours you can take, but the detour is not the normative path. It's not only the path you're meant to go down, It's like a temporary triage of a situation where you can't take the normal path. There might be certain times where we have to engage in political action to do something. But I tend to think as Christians that using and trying to wield levers of power and politics and authority to promote our goals, it's not a normative path. And insofar as we engage in the political process, I feel like it should be less taking power to wield on behalf of the church. And it should be more of like we're trying to remove political power from interfering with the mission of the church. And I guess you could say that's my libertarian like I'm smuggling libertarianism in there but I don't think you have to be even you don't need to be a libertarian there like I think.
[17:51] Church I mean the state obviously interferes with the church even a Christian nationalist would agree with that now what they want to do, is flip that around and have the state have the civil magistrate assist the church you.
[18:09] Now, I'm not even saying that there can't be some collaboration between civil magistrates and the church. But what comes to mind there is more that the civil magistrate would appeal to pastors and ministers, licensed counselors in the church, church-funded and organized programs and outreach as ways to solve problems. But out of recognition that it's not theirs to solve, right? Like if someone's committed a crime and they realize that the reason they committed a crime is because of drug addiction or because of extreme poverty and desperation, then they could be like, well, this person might, have some restitution to pay if they harmed someone. But primarily what they need is like they need social services. And this is where it's like we have this whole social service aspect of the state in our current society, which I detest. I don't even detest from just a libertarian position. I detest because like...
[19:21] Pausing here because I'm trying to make sure I phrase this correctly. If you think I'm wrong, please write in. Go on social media, at DoubleCueAnarchyNX, make a post, tag me in it, or email me, or it's jacobatlibertarianchristians.com. Comment on this YouTube video if you're watching it on YouTube. There's easy ways to get a hold of me, okay? So if you think I'm wrong, I'm open to the correction. I will entertain any argument on this. But I don't care where you, politically left, politically right, politically neutral, you know, socially liberal, socially conservative, fiscally liberal, fiscally conservative. Like, okay, as long as you're a Christian, I feel like it's going to be hard for you to disagree with me on this. Could you not agree that if the church was doing what it's supposed to do and living up to its ideal, that the idea that we needed government to create social services and social safety nets in the first place, it should have never entered the brain of a human being, right? If, if, if we, if, if the church was not just preaching the gospel, but without their, with, you know.
[20:41] You know, feeding the poor and helping the homeless and caring for the orphan and the widow, loving the least of these, as if they are Christ himself, because that which we do to the least of these we've done unto him, like, People should just be like, oh, someone proposed a law to have elderly retired people taken care of with some kind of social security safety net paycheck after they retire. It's like, well, there's no need for that. The churches take care of people in their old age when families can't. Oh when people lose jobs we need unemployment programs there's no need the churches have these voluntary, you know work programs that help people who are who are in between jobs to be able to put food on the table for their families and that help people get hooked up hooked up with with work training programs where they need to switch careers or get back on their feet, you know it's it that's the kind of thing i'm talking about right like, church, we as Christians are not against the things that people want, right? If we as libertarians are not against the things people want, which kind of what I'm trying to get at, right? Like, I want healthcare for everyone. I want social services and safety nets and all that.
[22:01] Beyond just the fact that there's like a trust issue here where it's like, yeah, I don't know if I want the government that covered up the Epstein files to be in charge of a lot of these things. There's just a competency issue to there, right? Like, is the government an instrument of coercion and mismanagement and bureaucracy and corruption, all this stuff? Like, is it the optimal vessel to handle all these social safety nets and services? Like I feel like it's hard to say that that's the ideal and it would it would be better if.
[22:37] The church was doing these things to a degree that even non-christians and atheists had to say hey we really don't agree with christians but man you know does society benefit from how much the church, does to serve the community, and what a testimony to the gospel that would be, instead I grew up in a, generation in a society where like the biggest the fruit of the evangelical community was the terror wars. Was the police state that we grew, and the world biggest prison population for, nonviolent drug offenders, and distorting a preservation and an advocacy of biblical views of marriage and sex for a distortion, which I typically refer to as purity culture, which didn't celebrate men and women and their differences, and celebrate sexual intimacy as a gift from God, but that created a whole generation of people who suffer from, a neurotic reaction and impulse.
[23:51] To sex and sexual intimacy, Or, because they got tired of that, and kind of being led to believe that they should feel ashamed and guilty about human sexuality, that they, you know, they said there must be something wrong with Christianity then, because this is just how I'm built.
[24:12] You know, just like, you know, it's, what I'm trying to get at is that, I don't, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the church isn't bearing good fruit. It hasn't been bearing good fruit. Not overall. There's individual churches that are healthy and growing and bearing amazing fruit, right? But overall, especially in my generation, in my time, it didn't seem like the net effect and the net direction of the church was healthy and that the fruit was abundant. And the church and evangelicals for my entire life have sort of, you know, kind of like mocked progressive and liberals for promoting big government, but like they just promote their own form of big government, right? Maybe they pay lip service to like, you know, oh, no handouts, but they want a nanny state to uphold certain cultural and moral norms. It's like, well, if these are the correct moral and cultural norms and they're best for society, then like, shouldn't we be such a city on the hill as a community, a light to the nations and the world that we're drawing people to us?
[25:31] You know we're supposed to be fishers of men drawing them to us to the light of christ not not not through fear and prisons and coercion I just, I i feel like sometimes I sound like i'm again like I said earlier people think will accuse me of smuggling my libertarianism into my christianity it's like, no I feel like at some point libertarianism became a thing because people smuggled, the Christian view of like all these things I'm talking about out of Christianity. And I'm just trying to bring them back in. Like, I don't, I don't need you to be an anarchist. I don't need you to, to like be an absolutist on the non-aggression principle in the way that I am. I don't need you to read Ludwig von Mises or Murray Rothbard or Ron Paul or anything. I just.
[26:28] We just take seriously and consistently loving our neighbor as ourselves and, just again like forget forget having a conversation about economics or politics and just, if if you can convince me that if the church was doing what it's supposed to do that we would still need the government to come in and handle all these things, then I guess it's a different argument but I just I that that's my challenge in this episode to people if they disagree with me. That's what you've got to convince me of to move me off this point. We are lazily, in an un-Christ-like way, not trying to be Christ to others, but we're trying to off-put a lot of that responsibility to politicians. I don't care. Again, I don't care what political background you are. It's like, does this sound like a good idea? Like yes let's put the care of the elderly people in the hands of the government and let's put the care of the poor in the hands of the government it's like we're called to care for the poorest Christians yeah the way I'm going to do that is by voting for the government, to do that I mean it's just.
[27:42] It's not right. It's not us picking up our crosses. It's us picking up our comfort and our laziness and trying to get others to do the hard work. Really, what we're doing is this whole redistribution model. And we're living off of credit and debt and inflation and endless spending. And I guess what I want to end on, this will be a shorter episode, is this. It's hard for me, like as much as it would be easier for me to just soften a little bit on my libertarian convictions, the truth is I have. The truth is that as the years go on and I have more kids and my life gets busier and I understand the complexity of life and just how, you get more certain about a fewer number of things and there's a larger number of things that you're less certain on and that's kind a part of growing up in a way, and yet I'm getting more certain in the gospel and in my faith, and I just, I feel like people are...
[28:52] I'm not smuggling libertarianism in. I feel like people are because, put it this way, because there are, I think, just inevitable, easy to come to, very intuitive conclusions about the logical entailments of what scripture teaches about loving our neighbor and authority and our Christian responsibility and Christian duties. And the logical entailments of these things lead to a worldview which very closely looks like libertarianism, people then accuse like well that can't be wrong because that can't be right because it looks like libertarianism and that's you smuggling it in i'm like no you're you're trying to smuggle it out, that's what I think you're you're trying to smuggle, the like libertarianism is just a natural law, political restatement of just normative moral truths that are not just like explicitly.
[29:55] Taught or entailed in the Bible in terms of the teachings, but it's just lived out in the, like, just read the story of the Bible, right? Like, read the story of man trying to do it his own way instead of doing it God's way, and men looking to kingdoms and alliances and their own schemes and plans rather than trusting it in god and rather than, doing it themselves like there's first Samuel 8 is is not just like there's obviously the very, like low-hanging fruit of that passage for christian libertarians to talk about, which is the like idea that there's something very telling about.
[30:46] Asking for a king being something that god likened to idolatry and rejecting him and saying that, he's going to take from you and enslave you to fight his wars and service his, you know basically be in service to enriching himself, but then there's this the one of the more subtler parts of first samuel eight, is the motivation was people wanted someone to fight their battles for them. And I think that was partly to settle disputes and partly to handle issues of the threats they had around them. But I think it was also reflective of a heart issue that we still have today, which is we don't want the responsibility. And I don't know, I thought I grew up with evangelical right-wing Christians talking about the importance of personal responsibility. Right? That should be a Christian virtue, a Christian value, right? Personal responsibility. And yeah, I guess that's where I want to end it. I don't know what else I really have to say.
[31:55] The Bible, I mean, listen, we need Christ and we need grace. We can't save ourselves, right? So, I mean, if you have to take personal responsibility for your salvation, you're screwed. So don't take, don't twist my words here. We need grace, but then that grace should be an opportunity, should be the invitation, should be the motivation, because of how grateful you are. You should be transformed by that grace, by the love of Christ, to live a transformed life. Not to just coast. You should be fueled to live a transformed life and find a way to be of service to your community, to your family, to the church, to the world, to those who are still living in darkness. And preaching the gospel should look a lot more like, you're taking care of the poor and the needy on your own and you're out there in hard situations trying to bring peace where there is conflict way more than it is, sharing memes on social media or holding up signs in the corner of your street telling people to repent or they're going to hell or, way more than.
[33:17] Mixing your Christian identity with your political identity and who you voted for in the last election. Preaching the gospel, listen, I think this saying is kind of wrong in a way because to preach the gospel, you do have to use words. But there's also something true about that expression, preach the gospel, use words if you have to. You have to live the gospel first.
[33:42] And I don't know, there's just something about, Again, explain, you can say it's a libertarian cop-out for me to use this argument, but it's just objectively true that government is men with guns compelling action. And there's a limited role in society for compelling people to action with guns. I don't know where that crosses into spreading Christian virtue. It should be for defending the innocent, right? I don't think I... I think that bears out in Scripture. Not just because... It's not necessarily explicitly taught, but I mean, how many instances of violence and force being used in other ways.
[34:30] Are celebrated and praised and taught as our normative outlook? I mean, we gotta... Listen, there's this weird thing where there's a weird... Ironic unity between dispensationalists and the more Christian nationalist types on the right, where they want to cling to—they want to ignore the parts in the New Testament and Hebrews and etc. That say that the old has passed away, right? The old has been made obsolete. Because they want to hold on to the parts of the old covenant that, you know, helped them feel good about wanting to do today what was more normative for that era, which is, you know, using force to compel behavior and not just, to uphold civil justice.
[35:21] But that's not like, not only do we have explicit commands about the temporary use of the law. Especially in the civil sense. But you don't really get this sense from Jesus or the apostles in the New Testament that there's this, emphasis to be made on, well, yeah, you're supposed to love people and serve them, but also make sure that you're compelling them with political violence to do what is right. Because, I mean, that didn't even work on God's own people. God set apart a nation and gave them laws and gave them kings, all with the explicit idea of this was to make them more righteous. And it didn't work.
[36:04] The state cannot restrain sin. You can't even restrain your own sin. How are you going to restrain the sin of other people? The only thing that can restrain sin is the work of the Holy Spirit. Is God's sovereign, you know, his common grace upon the entire world and then his saving grace and regenerative grace and transforming grace and power in our lives. And that's the good news of the gospel. I just don't know that we should be preaching the gospel while pointing guns in people's faces. And if you disagree with me, I guess you just need to, maybe you need to hold a gun to my face and explain why.
[36:46] Because I'm saying that kind of tongue in cheek, but seriously, I just, I don't get it. I've tried to soften up my libertarianism. It took three months away. I went and touched grass. I kind of removed myself on purpose from libertarian circles even. I was just like, I don't know. Maybe I've just been in the libertarian world too long. Maybe I'm just too invested in my podcast. Maybe I'm just too caught up in like this is my identity. But I mean, I haven't done an episode for three months. I've been unplugged as I've ever been in the libertarian world. And honestly, I'm annoyed with libertarians most of the time. I'm not happy with the libertarian party right now.
[37:24] I think a lot of libertarians are ideologically possessed and immature and they don't understand that you can't really have a libertarian world with a, you know, very degenerate and non-Christian culture. And so, I mean, believe me, I think getting to a libertarian society is kind of hard.
[37:45] But again, I think a Christian nationalist, I'll end on this, Christian nationalists and Christians on the right who are critical libertarian, libertarians and libertarianism, it's like they get the correct insight almost, right? They like observe something true and take the wrong lesson from it because they'll say, oh, well, like you can't have freedom without a moral people. I mean, kind of. I agree with you. The problem is not with the freedom. I think I said that already, and I'm just coming back to it because I just what I that's what I keep coming back to. Like the problem's not the freedom. The problem is the culture that's decayed. What do we do about that? The easy answer, although it's not really an answer, I guess like the just the what feels like the easier answer is, well, what if we just, I don't know, try to change the laws and try to, you know, steer people back on course, but...
[38:45] I mean, I guess I kind of agree with Christian nationalists on one thing, which is that we kind of were founded as a Christian nation in a way, right? It was a bunch of Protestants and some Catholics coming together to start this experiment in not just political liberty, but religious liberty. And it was predominantly Christian. And I don't know, correlation is in causation. It feels like the bigger the government has gone, the less Christian we've got. And maybe there's a chicken and egg thing there because maybe the less Christian we got, the bigger the government grew. But anyway, strong correlation there. I don't know that you can be a, well, I guess I'll try to not go off into another tangent and just distill what I'm saying to this. I don't want to be a partisan libertarian, but I guess I'm still very somewhat emotionally reluctantly the most radical libertarian, almost more radically libertarian than I've ever been. Because I'm more committed to, and I don't know, this might sound, I guess, somewhat like morally superior to my Christian friends who aren't libertarian. I don't mean it to come off that way.
[40:05] I just, life is so messy, right? Like, we can just barely run our own lives. Why do we think we can give sinful people a bunch of power and think that that's, that, you know, they're going to be able to run other people's lives well? We definitely need authority. We need rules. But man, we got to keep that as limited and decentralized as possible. I just, it's not really like, I can throw libertarianism out. I just feel my Christianity leading me to that conclusion.
[40:38] You know, civil justice is sort of like this triage we have in this fallen world to handle conflicts when they get to the point where, you know, you just, you have to stop, you know, aggression from going unchecked. But outside of that, like we live in a fallen imperfect world. The only hope of it is the gospel. And like I put in that question there, it's like, if the only hope is the gospel, then what are we doing spending all of our time with politics? Which is almost why, in a way, I don't want to talk about libertarianism. I just want to focus on the gospel. I'd love to stop talking about libertarianism because what happens is that there's such a revival in the church that we stop, you know, it's like we just start doing the things we're supposed to be doing as a church. The whole question I got asked on that Eschatology Matters show, it's like, what if we do, what if we keep the main thing, the main thing, and we pursue political power to pursue our agenda? We're not even doing the main thing right now.
[41:41] What do you mean if we keep the main thing, the main thing? How about we get the main thing to be the main thing? I'd love to see what this country would look like if that happened. And if that happened, I could hang the podcast up because I'd be out there spreading the gospel and libertarianism would just be the byproduct. So I'm not a post-millennial utopian who thinks we're going to have... This Christian golden age or that we're guaranteed a Christian culture or, you know, listen, things might just keep getting worse with the culture. Like we're not guaranteed or promised to live in a Christian culture. That's the other thing too. There's just this presumption. It's like, I don't know. I guess it's nice to enjoy some political and religious freedom in a culture that seems to enforce and celebrate your ideas. But like, that's kind of a blip in Christian history in some ways. It was definitely a blip in early Christian history. And we we've made an idol out of comfort and wanting to be the majority and, presuming that we have a right to sort of like act on God's behalf to say like people who have, I mean.
[42:59] We should be trying to steer society and people and culture back towards God. But if they don't, they don't do that. We leave that to God, right? We leave them to the grace of God. I don't know. That's just what makes sense to me. But I'm open to other, I'm open to counter arguments. I just, I just, I don't see it.
[43:25] The question I think i've asked this question a million times i'll ask it again now it's just think about whatever law whatever thing whatever policy or law you think we need to have right where you think and I could always be libertarian up until this point I think.
[43:41] I think we need a law for for for this thing all right I mean you ask yourself if you would take a gun and go and enforce that law and if you would feel that you'd have a clean conscience and going and answering for that on Judgment Day. Now I mean if I had to use lethal force to stop someone from killing someone else, I think on Judgment Day I would say I mourned killing the life of this person because they are made in the image of God and I think about you know.
[44:14] What happened in that person's life that caused them to be that way. But yeah, I use force to protect an innocent person from someone who's committing aggression against them. And I don't think I would sit there and like celebrate like, you know, you know, heck yeah, I killed a person. But I, with, with much trepidation, I, I would be a lot more on judgment day. I'll be a lot more concerned. If that ever happens, I'll be a lot more concerned about other things I did that I'm, worthy of damnation of than that. But I don't know. If I used a gun to threaten the life of a, you know, like breaking down a door, to a family at home, because I think they might be illegal immigrants and pointing guns in their faces and detaining them for months. And if they resist, I'm going to shoot them. I don't know if I, and listen, I'm not like some lefty, open borders lover who thinks all cultures are equal and who thinks that there's not, you know, genuine concerns about cultural mixture, but.
[45:23] Maybe we should be thinking of solutions that don't involve, you know, a giant police state that don't involve, I don't know, like, sometimes as Christians, we just have to accept that, like, we have to act within certain limited, like, we can have concerns about certain things, but we have to trust that God's in control. and if.
[45:52] There can be rational fears and concerns but if you let your fears and concerns drive you to the point of like yes I must use violence against people who have, they're guilty of the crime of not having the right piece of paper in the eyes of our giant bureaucratic government then I don't know there's something there I feel like I'd have a hard time Well, Jesus, I know this looks bad, but you see, I had to threaten to kill this man because he came into our country without permission. And so that's why I had to scar his children by breaking into that house and putting a gun to his face. You see, like, it's just, I mean, yeah, if you feel like Jesus would be applauding you after you did that, I'm just, again, I don't know. I guess I need to stop apologizing because I don't want to push away Christian brothers and sisters, but I also, but I do want to push them to just, just think about this a little bit. Like governments and laws and the things that you promote have, have human consequences. If you wouldn't do yourself, why would you advocate for, I mean, maybe you could say I wouldn't want to do it. But like again it's like if you wouldn't feel proud about doing it if you wouldn't want to defend yourself doing it then why would you get someone else to do it so I don't know I'd.
[47:21] That whatever you want. Like, I mean, if you don't want to call it libertarian, don't call it libertarian. But I've, I've yet to come up with a, I've yet to come up with something that I think I would want to violently threaten someone over other than if they're being violent, like if they're, if, if they're threatening violence themselves, that's not the only thing I can think of where I'd want to be compelled to use violence against them. Outside of that, I can disagree with their lifestyle. I can think it's sinful. I can think that it's something that's going to lead to harmful things for them and maybe their family or their friends or their children or whatever. But what are some solutions we can think of outside of violence for that? We're saying like we're the body of Christ that we have we are the inheritors and venerators of this great tradition of God's chosen people to be the light to the world and the only solution we can come up with for some problems is just pass a law and have men with guns solve it, maybe again if the church was keeping the main things the main things and doing what we're supposed to do what would that look like right What would that look like? Would we have falling birth rates?
[48:38] Would we have so many people addicted to drugs? Would we have so many people, like so many broken families and so many children growing up in the foster care system, which is absolutely horrible and abusive? Would we have such high rates of abortion? Would we have... This cultural, like this sick cultural problem. I mean, I mean, talk about cultural mixing. I homeschool my children because I don't want them mixing with our American culture. So like, yeah, I have some concerns about, you know, Islamic culture. I have some concerns about, you know, other, you know, second and third world, societies and their cultures that they move here. But I got concerns about just mainstream, modern American culture. So like, I don't know. I'm not prescribing some kind of utopian vision of society. If anything, I would say this, the utopian vision of society is that just a little bit more violence will make it better. What if we stopped brainstorming what the right amount of violence is to make society better is and figured out how we as Christians can, preach and live out the gospel more than we are now, and how we can serve the least of these more than we are now and how we can be better representatives of Christ in this world to the broken people in our lives and community more than we are now.
[50:06] That's my challenge. That's my question. Thank you, everyone, for listening to me rant for 50 minutes. Didn't know what I was going to talk about when I got on here, but I, it's one of those episodes where I had things that I just, I knew I wanted to say, couldn't quite script it out because it was just, it was tangled up in my brain. And so you got a stream of consciousness, but I think kind of made a point. I think it was hopefully coherent.
[50:35] I also just want to end with a prayer because I think that's something I've thought about doing before and I haven't always done. So I'm going to pray to close this out. That's going to be something I do going forward. God, I confess that I am not an expert. I'm not the smartest person in the world. I don't have a lot of certainty outside of Christ and him crucified in the empty tomb and the resurrection. I have, with humility, I have this platform and want to pray this prayer. Because I don't pray that Christians become more libertarian. I don't even really pray for the world to become more libertarian, because libertarianism, although I think it's a beautiful political philosophy, pales in comparison to the gospel message. I pray that we would become more enthralled, more captured, more...
[51:34] Love with your word and your gospel. And that the problems and the evil we see in this world would not be things that we would respond to with fear. They would not be things we respond to with hatred for those who are different than us or that who blaspheme you, or that live sinfully, but that we would see these problems as opportunities, to do what you called us to do, to be salt and light. Pray that you would help us to be more comfortable being uncomfortable and that we would not prioritize our comfort and that we would not.
[52:17] Seek to uphold the interests of political parties or a nation or a culture, that our citizenship in your kingdom would be the filter through that we view all these things, and that the heart that you have, for the lost would be the filter by which we view these problems. Lord, I ask that you would give me humility and that you would give all of us a humility. That we don't necessarily need to be political scholars. We don't need to be economists. We don't need to study 50 years or 100 years of world history or geopolitics. But that you would just give us a clarity to just one person, one community one minute at a time one day at a time.
[53:14] To love and serve others the way Christ modeled when he walked the earth and that we would pour ourselves out as a response to the way that Christ has poured himself out for us, pray these things in your name, amen. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I'll catch you next time. Take care.
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