Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Defining Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

What does it mean to be a Christian who loves their country? When does patriotism become idolatry? Does Scripture command us to support everything the State of Israel does? In this episode, Pastor Allen addresses all of these questions and unpacks the spiritual decline we’re witnessing in the U.S. He takes a candid look at President Trump’s decision to strike Iran, the movement toward peace between Rwanda and Congo, and other important issues. Watch the full episode to gain a clear, biblical lens on the cultural and spiritual challenges shaping our world today.More Information: God Bless America Again: https://store.allenjackson.com/category/books/bk201001 __ It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective. Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6d Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

Welcome to culture and Christianity. A lot to talk about so much happening in the world, so much happening internationally, so much happening in our nation, so much happening that affects people of faith. I'm glad we've got a few minutes to talk. I'm going to ramble through a half a dozen topics. On top of all of that, it's Fourth of July week. We're celebrating our nation and our heritage,

and I've got some ideas around that. But I want to start with a little biblical piece. At the end of the day, I'm a pastor. that's my day job. The rest of this is still kind of a side hustle. And I think, you know, one of the things, questions that I'm asked a lot and one of my responses a lot is it seems like we've lost common sense. It's like we've lost our minds. We're mutilating our teenagers. We can't define marriage. We don't know what a man or a woman is. I mean, just things that not very long ago did not seem like public debate issues. They were common sense issues.

How did we land in that place where well-educated people, people with lots of degrees, people with lots of success, people with lots of resources, have stepped away from things that seem so plainly obvious. I don't typically like simple answers, but I think there is a simple answer to that question. And I don't think the reversal of it is simple, but I think the understanding of it is pretty straightforward. I want to read you two or three verses to scripture and see if you can get the answer. You don't have to be really clever, and you certainly don't even have to be a biblical scholar. In Job 2828, Job is typically believed to be the oldest book in the Bible.

It says that the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. And then in Psalm 111, it's not unique to this verse. It's something of a theme in the book of Psalms. It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And in Proverbs 1-7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. There it is, plain sight, hiding in plain sight. The fear of the Lord is the beginning. of wisdom, the beginning of knowledge. So absent the fear of the Lord, no matter how many degrees

you earn, how much, how many resources you accumulate, no matter how much power you can marshal, you're not wise. Now, to fully unpack that, we need a little definition around the fear of the Lord. It doesn't mean we cower in dread or great terror at the thought of God. Although a little bit of that anxiety around the thought of God, I think is appropriate. He's the greatest authority that you and I will ever give an account to, but fundamentally the fear of the Lord is a reverence, a respect, a sense of awe. You know, I equated to a season in my life

when I spent a lot of time around horses, I was always just so impressed with the tremendous strength that a horse has. You know, the reason that if a horse breaks their leg, there's typically not a resolution for it is they have such great strength. You can't immobilize a bone long enough for it to heal. No matter what we do,

we truly can't effectively immobilize. a part of a horse's leg. So that's a devastating injury. Well, you know, I was afraid of horses as a boy, but my father, who was my trainer, taught me how not to be afraid of them, how to stand with them, how to interact with them,

to minimize your chance of being hurt. And as a result, I came to the place where they just don't frighten me, big horses, mean horses, you can put me in a small space, you know, you can put me in the stall in the dark. They just don't frighten me. Having said that, I wouldn't walk up behind,

a horse, jerk its tail, and scream. If you do that, you're going to get to visit the emergency room in your local community, because they have tremendous strength, and that kind of unwanted intrusion will probably warrant a response. I have a respect for their great strength that puts some boundaries around my behavior, so there's not a negative consequence. Well, that's the image I use for the fear of God. I have enough respect for God, for his power, for his majesty, for his glory, for his authority, that it puts some boundaries around my behavior because I don't want a consequence that's unwanted. I want to learn to respond to God with a reverence and a respect that allows his power and his glory and his majesty to bring good

things to my life and not to bring limits that I don't want. And I would submit to you that to too far great of an extent we have lost or diminished or set aside the fear of God. even in the churches. You know, we want to bring our pets to church. We want church to be about convenience and comfort and ease. We want it to be entertaining. We only want to worship if we like the choruses that are being presented. Or if we like the worship leader that is presenting it.

Or if it's not a musical style that suits us, we don't participate. You know, I spent my adult life in church world and serving the church. We do age-graded music for children. We start in the nursery. and we carry that right through their teenage years. But at some point, we expect people to become adult enough to worship God, even if the music is not age-graded, which it means it may not be your generational preference.

Worship God anyway. You know, we've just gotten into some places where we've lost the fear of God. And if we will rekindle that in our hearts as people of faith in the midst of the churches, then I think that fear of God, we can see it come back into our schools, into our public schools, to our universities, into the public arenas, to corporate boardrooms. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And if you don't fear God, I don't care how high your IQ is, how many degrees you earn, how many resources you've managed to accumulate, how much power you wield,

I don't believe your wise. And I'm quite content to be someone who grew up in a barn and cultivates a respect and a reverence for God. and then I believe he'll bring his wisdom to our lives. So maybe that's the devotional for this culture and Christianity episode. But the fear of God is worth cultivating in your life and in the lives of your children and your grandchildren and your friends. Make friends with people who have a healthy respect, a healthy reverence, a sense of awe for a living God. Now I want to change directions completely for just a minute. One of the big events in the last few days, in fact, it canceled my trip to Israel.

I was supposed to be in Jerusalem for a couple of weeks. I had some opportunities set up to do some interviews and shows to produce. And the evening that I was scheduled to leave, the Israelis sent their fighter jets towards Iran. And the airspace over Israel was closed. And summarily, our flights were canceled. And so my trip and the tour that we were leading didn't get to materialize. So what's been happening with Israel and Iran has been a big part of my life in these last couple of weeks. And it brings me to a couple of ideas.

This is Fourth of July week. There's two ideas that go together, so bear with me just a moment. Two things, two phrases that you hear, and they usually carry a very negative connotation. One is Christian Zionism, or you'll hear people referred to as Christian Zionist. And it's usually a pejorative, a negative term, a derogatory term. The other one is Christian nationalism. And that is typically used in a negative context. I'll start with Christian nationalism.

It's a little simpler. It's Fourth of July week. I think we've got to deconstruct this a little bit. My definition of Christian nationalism, when I think it's a negative, it goes along these lines. It's when you love your country or even yourself more than God. When you love your country more than you love God. You see the fallacy with a weakness in that is if you do that, you'll use your faith for excusing the inexcusable. And we have some examples of that in history of nations, Christian nations, Christian nations in Europe, seasons in our own nations. when we use scripture and our faith to excuse the inexcusable slavery, in equal treatment for women,

there's been some inexcusable chapters in our history that were endorsed by people of faith because we loved ourselves and our selfish agenda or our national agenda more than we loved God. That doesn't mean it's wrong to love ourselves or to love our nation. Both of those things are necessary for healthy nations and healthy self-images, but there are boundaries around them. You know, the definition of the antagonist of people of faith we use is they'll say that the U.S. was founded on a Christian nation.

The founding fathers were all orthodox evangelical Christians. God has chosen us for a special role in history, and that makes the opponents of Christian nationalism just nuts. Well, for the record, I do believe God was involved in the founding of this nation. I don't believe all the founders were evangelical Christians, as we understand that term today. but the overwhelming majority of them were practicing Christians with a high view of Scripture and the authority of God. It's really not even a debatable point. It's so clear from the documents they produced, from their personal papers, it's just a reality. They weren't all morally perfect.

They made mistakes. But I don't think there's any question that God was very much involved in the founding of our nation and that he has a special role for us in history. I don't believe God's an American. I don't believe they play the star-spangled banner in the elevators of heaven. I don't think when you go through the pearly gates, you'll see the red, white, and blue flapping in the breeze. But that does not mean that God doesn't have a role for us as a people and as a nation.

You know, when I hear the accusation that Christian nationalism inspires violence, it provides an excuse. I just don't agree. Plain language, I think our country will only flourish if we believe that. that it's worth sacrificing for. I don't think you can have leaders who hate our country and imagine that we will do well. That wouldn't work on a sports team.

It wouldn't work in a family system. It wouldn't work in a business. And it won't work in our nation. It is not wrong to be a patriot. It's not wrong to want your country to flourish. It is wrong to hate your country and take the benefits which were earned by the sacrifice of others.

And I'm very weary with that. To enjoy liberty and freedoms that were paid for by the sacrifice of others while you hate the place that extends those liberties and freedoms to you is fundamentally wrong and I won't excuse it and I won't wrap it in spiritual language like grace and mercy and say it's okay. I may demonstrate kindness to those people, but I don't agree with their perspective.

So you have to pay attention a little bit. Language is manipulated these days. They change the definitions of things and they think it changes the meanings. It doesn't. It's just a fancy way of manipulation and deception. If you call an elephant, an eagle, it doesn't. mean an elephant can fly. The other phrase I mentioned is

Christian Zionism. Let me take a minute with that. That's Christians who believe that the modern state of Israel is in existence because of the intervention of Almighty God, the sovereign intervention of God. I'm one of those people. If it means I get labeled as a Christian Zionist, I will wear that

label proudly. It does not mean that I believe everything that the Israeli politicians do is right, or everything that happens in the land of Israel is godly. it is not, you know, the scripture is very clear. God said he would regather the people to the land of Israel after 2,000 years of being distributed to the nations.

And he said, after I bring them back, I will begin to clean, I will pour clean water on them. So the sequence of events is the regathering, the establishment of the Jewish people in their historical homeland as an expression of the sovereign power of God. And then that same power of God will begin to clean them up. sounds a great deal like the process that happens in our lives. God calls us by his sovereign grace out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his son, and then he begins the process of the character reformation, the transformation that is maturing as a Christ follower.

So I don't believe we should resent or have ill feelings towards the Jewish people for the process God is enacting in their lives. All of the ungodliness you can find in Middle Tennessee you can find in the land of Israel, When you land at the Ben-Gurian airport between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, you probably won't hear the flutter of angels' wings. I believe there's angels there, but they are people just like we are. So I'm very grateful to be a Christian Zionist, to be an advocate for the Jewish people as the chosen people of God. I believe the modern state of Israel has a role to play in God's eternal purposes. And I believe it's in our best interest to be an advocate for them.

but that does not mean that we should endorse everything they do or support every political idea that they put forward. It takes some discernment and some wisdom. And to have that, you'll need some biblical knowledge. You'll need an awareness of current events. And you'll need to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit. And those things aren't simple. Sometimes we blindly just quote those passage in Genesis

and say, God will bless those who bless you and he'll curse those who curse you. That's not a carte blanche that means they get a blank, check to do whatever. But it does mean God watches over his word and if you're going to err, you want to err in the side of supporting the Jewish people and not opposing him. One of the tragic aspects of the history of the Christian church, and it's not just the modern church, it goes back for centuries and millennia, is the greatest persecutor of the Jewish people throughout history without any question has been the Christian church, far more than the Muslims, far more than the

Nazis, the Christian Church has been the greatest persecutor of the Jewish people. Most of us don't know our history. When I studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, we're having class one day, and one of the, they were overwhelmingly Jewish students, most of them from the states in the program I was in. Very few of them had any acquaintances

with Christians. I was there, I was the only pastor that any of them had ever met. And one day they turned around in class, and they say, why did the Christians hate us so much? I mean, that's very much a part of their awareness. We're typically just completely blind to that. So Christian Zionism, I know people use it in a negative connotation,

but I will gladly stand with the Jewish people and their right to that homeland that God assigned to them. In light of current events in our nation, Israel attacked Iran, taking out their air defenses, attacking their ability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their ultimate goal was to interrupt their nuclear program. Iran has said for more than 40 years that as soon as they had nuclear capabilities, they would destroy Israel and attack America. I believe, and I learned this lesson when I lived in the Middle East,

I think you have to believe your enemies. When they tell you they'll do something, I think you should pay attention to what they tell you. So I thought Israel's attack on Iran was justified and warranted. I thought there was some brilliance in the way it was executed. There were many layers of that. I won't unpack all that in this discussion. If you weren't paying attention, you missed some truly brilliant implementation of a war plan in neutralizing Iranian military capabilities.

They did not attack population centers. I did an interview with someone who was a part of the process. when they took out an Iranian military commander. He was at home asleep in his bed, and the Israelis sent a rocket through the wall of the building he lived in. It was a multi-story building. I saw the photographs. They sent a rocket through the wall,

killed a man in his bed, and it didn't break the windows in the adjoining apartment units or condominium units. I don't know how it was owned. But the windows were intact in the neighboring rooms. So there was a very targeted loss of life. That's a stark comparison to the Iranian attack on the Israelis, which continued for days and days

when they were launching their missiles carrying big T&T payloads, explosive payloads, into their civilian centers, into population centers. They weren't attacking the Israeli military. They were responding by attacking the Israeli population. There's not a moral equivalency in those two approaches. And then I heard in the legacy media, particularly when the United States, we finally got involved with the most remarkable attack. We sent our B2 bombers with these specially designed bombs that they'd spent many years preparing for the specific task.

Iran had built a nuclear reactor deep in a mountain beneath many layers of sophisticated protection with concrete and steel. we had designed weapons that could penetrate those deep underground bunkers. We sent bombers from the heartland of America on a 7,000-mile journey to be refueled in mid-air to attack strategically those targets. And they were apparently remarkably successful with that. And the messaging that I heard so frequently after that was that we should have negotiated longer. When I say there's a lack of wisdom and common sense and intelligence in the the public square. This is a really good example. I mean, I earned a degree in history, but this

occur in events. 1979, America hostages were taken in Tehran when the regime of the Mullahs was put in place, and they held American hostages for 444 days. We negotiated through that entire period. Jimmy Carter was president. They negotiated for more than a year. There was no release of the hostages. Ronald Reagan was elected on inauguration day. Reagan had already established that if he got to the Oval Office and the hostages were still being held in Tehran, that he would release the bombers. So the Iranians on inauguration day,

after 444 days, released the Americans that had been held. They understood that somebody was coming to the White House that would use force to see that our hostages were released. Well, from 1979, until current times the Iranians have consistently not only threatened Americans, they have actively sought to do harm to Americans around the world. They have funded the primary global sponsor of terrorism. We have had thousands of our troops, injured, hundreds have been murdered,

American citizens have been threatened. The most celebrated recent example of that was October. the 7th in 2023, the Iranian trained, Iranian funded, Iranian sponsored, Iranian armed, terrorist of Hamas, invaded Israel to a music festival. They killed Americans who were gathered there. They killed Israelis who were gathered there. They took Americans and Israelis hostage. And for more than 600 days, they've held those hostages while negotiations took place. And as of today, all those hostages are the bodies of those people taken hostages have not been released. I think negotiating from 1979 until today, including a murderous episode in 2023,

reflects an insane amount of patience and a willingness to negotiate with a regime that clearly had no intention of living as a citizen amongst the nations of the world. They're terrorist thugs and bullies who, with authoritarian intimidation, rule over the Persian people. I have interviewed multiple Iranians begging for help in releasing the people of Iran from the brutal dictatorship of the Mullahs. And yet when we responded to destroy or to diminish their nuclear capabilities, there was no shortage of people finding microphones. on very celebrated platforms and networks. I watched them. My flights were canceled. I was curious about what was happening.

And I watched these people say, we should have negotiated longer. We hadn't negotiated enough. That President Trump was premature, that it was a knee-jerk response, that he was grandstanding. That reflects such a profound ignorance and lack of awareness

of Iranian intent and behavior over decades that it doesn't really warrant a response, but I thought we needed to be informed. And so I took it. I'm grateful for what our military did. I'm amazed at the precision with which they could carry that out. I'm thankful that we're not involved in a boots-on-the-ground conflict in Iran. I don't think we needed to be.

I'm grateful for what the Israelis did that made it possible for those flights to come and go with a minimized threat of destruction. I'm grateful for President Trump and his courage to authorize that. I watched his very brief press conference that evening or statement to the press the evening after that raid was carried out. And I don't know that I've ever seen such profound relief on his face. I don't know him personally. I watch him from a distance like you do. But I very much respected his courage in doing that.

It was fraught with danger for him and giving his enemies, enemies reasons for a personal attack. You know, in the world we live in right now, so many of us are afraid to stand up for biblical truth or right and wrong in the public square because we don't want to suffer economic loss. We don't want to be canceled. We don't want to lose a friend.

We don't want to be shunned. We don't want to do all those things. And I watched the courage that it took for President Trump and our military commanders to carry out that. And I was profoundly thankful for them. Thankful for our military and grateful that our young men and women aren't suffering in Iran today.

I think God smiled upon us. And I think the timing of it was brilliant. I think the war in Gaza, that action's got to be completed. The hostages and the bodies of those hostages have to be released. So many of you send us messages, letters, emails, notes in a variety of formats saying thank you for the ministry, for willing to speak the truth into culture in this rather tumultuous. Well, I hear your feedback, and it's very valuable. The question I'm so often asked is, I feel like we should do more. What can we do? How do we do something? Clearly, God is moving

in the earth. He's raising up voices of truth. We're certainly not unique or alone in that, but there is something you could do that would help us. Join us as a monthly ministry partner. Our baseline for how we build our plans for next comes from those monthly partners. Your gift of $25 or more enables us to imagine a different future. So if God has been, blessed you through the ministry, I would ask you to make that simple investment in what's next. And together, we will join God in helping to spread the message of a biblical worldview and its significance for our families, our communities, our nation, and for the body of Christ throughout the earth. Join us in that partnership. We'll share some unique learning opportunities with you,

and together we'll move with what God is doing in the earth right now. Something else I celebrated was a peace negotiation established between Congo and Rwanda. Those countries have been in conflict for more than about 40 years. We had some close ties there. My parents spent time in both Rwanda and Congo. We helped some young people escape Rwanda, some back during Clinton's administration. If you were paying attention in about a 90-day window, there was almost a million people in Rwanda murdered. It was a genocide.

Two tribal groups there. The slaughter was brutal. They take machetes and go into villages and kill everybody that was there. Whole buildings filled with. with skulls. I mean, it was a horrific thing. And the conflict between Congo and Rwanda being a resolve to the point that perhaps some peace could come to that part of Africa is an amazing gift for the people of faith. I've had some wonderful times in Africa with pastors, conferences, and church leaders. And if you're not in the habit of praying for the continent of Africa,

please do. They need our prayers. They need the gospel. Untold trillions of dollars will not fix the problems in Africa. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms lives. And sometimes the church loses sight of that and lose perspective with that. And I'm grateful for political progress, but ultimately it's the advancement of the gospel that will make the difference. We've had some other victories at home. The Supreme Court recently handed down a handful of rulings, the majority of which have wonderful implications for us. for those of us who embrace a Judeo-Christian worldview, a biblical worldview.

They're ruling around protecting our children from some of the transgender youth and gives the children permission to opt out of that coursework in public schools is an amazing statement. I think it's a tremendous protection. I'm grateful the Supreme Court was willing to make those rulings. It reflects some real courage on their part. I lament the fact that it required the Supreme Court. They seemed like common sense rulings to me.

I would have preferred, honestly, that the message had been thundering from the pulpits of churches. It had been echoing from people in the pews. It had become reverberating across our nation to the point that it felt like such common sense that it didn't require the intervention of the Supreme Court. Absent that, I'm very grateful for the Supreme Court. And perhaps it will unleash the courage within the church and amongst the people of faith. to stand for the truth. Folks, we can't gather in our churches on the weekend

and sing our favorite choruses and recite our favorite verses and avoid the current culture. We're called to be salt and light. We don't need to be angry or belligerent. We certainly don't need to be violent. But we have got to have the courage to take our truth into the public square. I thought the debate or the commentary

or the responses from two of the Supreme Court judges was fascinating. Katanji Brown Jackson did not like it. She wrote the dissenting opinion. She made some snarky comments, clearly implicating President Trump, is trying to take an imperial role. And then Amy Comey Barrett wrote a response to her, suggesting that the judiciary was trying to establish themselves

in an imperial role with no precedent in history or law. Considering the kind of carefully guarded comments we typically see from the Supreme Court, that was like a public smackdown. And I was grateful for the courageous response. I thought it was appropriate. But thank God, the common sense prevailed, that biblical worldview prevailed. And now perhaps the church will find the courage.

Maybe we'll have enough fear of God that we'll let God's wisdom begin to inform some of our public decisions again. I think that is extraordinarily important. As I'm recording this, it looks as if the Senate will pass the President's big, beautiful economic package, that big, beautiful bill they've been talking about. It has elicited a lot of debate in our nation for quite some time now,

and it looks as if it will make it through both the House and the Senate only with Republican support, so it's not really a bipartisan bill. It makes it through the Senate with the Vice President J.D. Vance casting his vote to break the tie. Nevertheless, it's made it through. There's still some work to be done on the bill before it finally gets approved. It looks like it will get approved. Perhaps it is a step in a direction to begin to restore some physical responsibility. It certainly has not eliminated pork and wasteful spending, but it is an attempt to do so.

And I'm grateful for that. You know, there are some principles that are a part of our history as a people that have not been taught. greatly. They certainly haven't been highlighted in recent years and even recent decades as a part of our American history curriculums. They were for many, many years and for many decades a part of what was given in public education and was respected at the highest levels of academia in universities and even elite universities. Those things have either been set aside or they've been openly mocked or taught as having been inappropriate. One of them goes back to the founding of our nation. The first European groups that came to our nation, came to this continent, came with a desire for the religious liberty to worship God as they saw fit without the intervention of the king or the state church.

It was for religious liberty. The Puritans, the separatist, you may have heard him called either way, same group. And one of the values that they brought was not just a high regard for scripture and a desire for worship without governmental or. state church interference was they had a biblically informed attitude towards work. They attached a theological significance to work in that work was understood to be an expression of worship. Not just when we gathered in a place of worship, are we sang worship music, or we studied our Bible, but how we used our strength and our energy and the gifts and talents that God gave us

and the diligence with which we applied them were an expression of our love for God. That got wrapped up in a phrase that you may or may not have heard. It's called the Puritanical work ethic. And it described American ingenuity and a commitment to hard work for decades and decades. It was a part of the American ethic, of the American ethos of our self-understanding. that has been greatly diminished. I mean, tremendously diminished, and to the point that work is almost seen now

as a necessary evil, it's something that has to be tolerated, but we're warned against it. You don't want to love your work too much. You don't want to have too high of a commitment to your work. We've talked about, you know, to be a workaholic is a very negative term. And we've listened to testimonies

are the stories of family systems damaged by parents who had too high of a commitment to work. Now, I believe you can take a commitment to work too far. I believe you can create unhealthy boundaries that are destructive. But I believe that as so often is the case, the corrective response to that has gone too far. I can give you some simple biblical principles that I think highlight this. when we meet God in the opening pages of the Bible, he's working. He's very busy with creation. And a very casual reading of those opening chapters will lead you to the conclusion that God worked a six-day week.

And he was working a long day. That's a very different attitude than we have towards work. When we get to the New Testament, Jesus tells us that God is continuing to work. Jesus' assignment, the incarnation, when he set aside the glory of heaven and submitted himself in obedience to put on an earth suit and come be one of us, is presented in the context of work. His father asked him to do it. It was unpleasant. It wasn't going to be fun all the time. It was going to require suffering and commitment and dedication and endurance. And it was a part of God's assignment for his life. If we go back to the Genesis narrative, after the fall, after Adam and Eve sinned, and the curse that God spoke up on the earth was that it would be by the sweat of his brow, by the effort of his life, that Adam would earn a living or make a living or a way to sustain himself from the earth. So work is a part of our assignment on this side of eternity.

I happen to believe, and this is a bit of a side trail, that the redemptive work of Jesus the work of the cross should bring a fruitfulness to our lives. I think that redemption is a total redemption. It's not just about eternity, but I think it impacts us body, soul, and spirit now, and I think one of the impacts of redemption is God will bring a productiveness,

a fruitfulness to your life as a part of your conversion, as a part of maturing in Christ that would never come as long as we're under the full curse of sin. I think if you're a teacher and you become a Christ follower, you'll become a more fruitful, productive teacher. I believe if you're a doctor and you become a Christ follower and you honor the Lord, you'll become a more fruitful, productive physician.

And you can fill that in for a mechanic or a plumber or an electrician. Work is an expression of worship. And it shouldn't be denigrated. It shouldn't be spoken poorly of. I think we need to teach our children the value of work, the value of responsibility. And that is something that is taught. It's not automatic. We've become far too entitled.

We're waiting for somebody else to make provision to us. We're being taught to be mad at the people who are successful. We imagine they've done something inappropriate or illegal or immoral or they wouldn't have that much. That is a very destructive attitude. And I don't believe it's biblical. Again, I said there was two things that it had been a part of our national ethic. One that was lost was a work ethic. The other one, and this will probably be a little more controversial, but hey, what do we do?

used to be a part of history, we talked about manifest destiny. And we taught American history. It was the idea that our country should extend from one coast to the other, that there was a divine destiny for our nation, and that it was territorial. I'm not necessarily suggesting that that was all biblically inspired. What I do think is helpful, and I do think is biblical, is that God has a destiny for our nation. And that as people of faith in this nation, we have a responsibility to,

to seek God and understand that destiny and be a part of it. You know, I'm often asked to comment on the differences between Christianity and Judaism and Islam. And one of the fundamental differences between Christianity and Islam is that Islam is primarily a political system and ideological system that has a religious expression. Christianity is very different. Christianity is fundamentally about personal transformation. It isn't fundamentally about politics or political formation. There are chapters in the history of the Christian church across a couple of millennia where it became politicized and those chapters have gone very poorly. Christianity is fundamentally about personal transformation,

which means that whatever nation a Christian finds themselves a citizen of, I believe we have a responsibility to understand God's destiny and our role in the unfolding story. of that culture where we find ourselves. It would have been better for the Christians in Europe during World War II or in the run-up to World War II to have understood their responsibility to stand up for the Jewish people. They failed in that and became very much a part

of what was the Holocaust. That wasn't just a Nazi initiative. It was fueled by the capitulation of the Christian Church in Christian Europe. Well, I believe in a similar way as 21st century citizens in this nation and citizenship matters. An open border is an ungodly thing.

It's an immoral thing. It is not an expression of compassion, encouraging hundreds of thousands, multiplied millions of people, to engage with us as citizens of this nation in an illegal fashion is not compassion. It's lawlessness. It's prophesied about in Scripture.

And for the church to be complicit in that is a repudiation, a rejection of some of our fundamental assignments. I believe as citizens, we serve the kingdom better to seek the Lord and try to understand his role for us, his assignment for us, as ambassadors for the kingdom of God who find ourselves in this nation. Yes, sometimes that leads us to civil disobedience. There are laws we can't endorse, we shouldn't endorse, and we shouldn't support. But those are not decisions easily arrived. that. I think we would be stronger as a people. I think it would be a gift to the generations, the younger generations, if we could begin to model for them and teach them and encourage them

to cultivate a work ethic and a sense of a destiny, a God-given destiny for our nation. Not unique. It's unique to us, but we're not the only nation that should imagine they have a destiny. I believe every nation should believe that. I think that's something Christians can contribute to any society or any culture. Well, I could go on. There's so much going by us in the news. I think you're probably, I hope you're about at the end of your workout.

If I was working out, I'd want to be nearing the end of my workout. I'll wrap this up with one idea. I did a, we have a booklet. It's not a booklet. It's a book that is actually a part of our broadcast right now on television and radio called God Bless America Again. and that's a very purposeful title. It was a title of a sermon series I did,

and it became a book and a small group study. There's no question that at multiple times in our history, God has blessed us as a people. He's given us great liberties and freedoms. He's brought us through global conflicts. He's given us natural resources that enable us to have amazing privileges and wealth. We didn't earn that or deserve that.

I've been other places in the world. I've been in Africa. it's a continent that has amazing natural resources, but they've not enjoyed the same liberties and freedoms that we have. God has blessed us. I know there's a larger discussion, but that's the simplest answer. Well, my prayer for this generation is that we would make choices that would enable God to bless us again.

Every generation has to make a decision regarding our future. We inherited some things, both good and bad, from the generations who preceded us, and we will hand a legacy to our children and grandchildren. children. Will it be a legacy of obedience and faithfulness to God? Or will it be a legacy of selfishness, of greed, of envy, of immorality, and perversion? If that's the legacy we hand off, then the generations who follow us will reap some very destructive things. I don't want to do that. Let's conduct ourselves in a way that we can with confidence and boldness say, may God bless America

again. I was reminded of a short story. I'm going to read a bit. It was written by Edward Everett Hale. The title of it was Man Without a Country. Some of you may remember it. It used to be a part of literature in high school English classes. I don't know that it is any longer. But in the short story, the author described a young man who in a moment of great emotion shouted, I wish that I may never hear of the United States again. And in the short story, the consequences of the young man or tragic, his wish is granted by a judge, and he never again sets foot on American soil, nor is anyone allowed to speak to him of his country. And in the story, the remaining years of the young man's life are filled with regret at the

opportunities that he forfeited by his own will. Well, I would submit to you that if we ignore or redesign our history to just placate the whim of popular sentiment, that we will forfeit much. It's very clear. Our nation was founded upon biblical principles by people with the desire to find an opportunity to do the worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, without interference from King or the state church. The great freedoms and liberties that we have emerged from a Judeo-Christian worldview derived from the Bible. And I've already said it, but I'm going to say it again. Every generation has to determine which principles will guide us.

It's a tremendous responsibility. It only requires three generations for an idea to be completely. lost. For hundreds of years, thousands of years, the fastest means of land transportation available to human beings was a fast horse. So almost anybody you met knew how to put a bridle on a horse, to put a saddle on a horse. They knew how to navigate that world. We've lost that idea because it's no longer essential to our transportation. We'll lose the same ideas that have protected us if we don't guard them. If we fail to embrace those things, which brought us liberty and freedom, and to teach them to the next generation,

we've abandoned our responsibilities. If we teach our kids to hit a curveball and we don't teach them to fear God, we haven't been great parents or grandparents. You know, I know history is often seen as burdensome, dry, even laborious. I disagree. Understanding how God is consistently blessed America

time and again and pouring his grace out upon us, showing us mercy, it provides us hope for the days ahead. There's some, dark things around us, and there's some dark days ahead of us, but we cannot afford to forget our past, good and bad, or we will forfeit the opportunities of our future. We are a people with a country, and I'm grateful for that. We're a people with a God, and that is transformational. We're a people with a future that is bright with possibility if we will once again turn in humility and honor Almighty God. If we'll do that, I believe we'll see God bless America again, and for that we'll all be

grateful. Thank you for spending a few minutes with me today. We'll be back again soon. Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson and Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.