Live Free with Josh Howerton - Was Jesus actually PROGRESSIVE? (React to the Daily Show clip) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Is Jesus “progressive,” or is that a modern political remix of an ancient faith? In this LIVE FREE Bonus Episode, Pastor Josh Howerton respond to a viral Daily Show clip and unpack how Scripture is often twisted in election seasons to serve ideologies rather than truth. He breaks down progressive Christianity, expose common misuses of Matthew 25 and Romans 13, clarify the biblical roles of the family, church, and state, and explain why Christian compassion and government authority are not the same thing. If you’ve ever felt confused by political Bible talk, or want to be equipped to test every claim like the Bereans, this episode will sharpen your discernment fast. 👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an episode!    👇 DON’T MISS OUT! Want to grow deeper in your faith? Text APP to 20411 to download the NEW Lakepointe Church app!   ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH: We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know God, Find Freedom, Discover their Calling, and Make a Difference. With 7 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone.  🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://lakepointe.church/give    STAY CONNECTED: 🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/ 👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/ 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect  🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LakepointeChurch   FOLLOW PASTOR JOSH: 👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowertonJosh/ 📸 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/josh_howerton/?hl=en  🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@howertonjosh    🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO!  ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc ▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We're so glad you're here. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And this weekly podcast is all about helping you do just that. Each episode is a deep dive into the Word of God tackling life, culture, and faith with truth and clarity so you can be equipped to live free in Christ.

Thanks for tuning in. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and follow us on all our social platforms to stay connected to everything happening with Live Free. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Here's what we're going to do in the next few minutes. There was a clip that went incredibly viral by a guy named John Fugel song that apparently has written a very bestselling book called The Separation Church and Hate.

And he was on The Daily Show with Jordan Klepper. Here's why I'm doing this. This, especially this year as we're leading up to the midterms, Christians are going to have an enormous amount of what you are getting ready to see thrown at them. And if you've never really thought clearly about this stuff, it can actually be kind of confusing. So here's what you're going to see, and I want to break this down for you in the next few minutes. What this guy's going to do is his very strong argument that he's making is that Jesus was in modern parlance a progressive. Now, one thing that every Christian should be aware of, this is really, really important.

there's a misconception that some naive newer Christians have that the good guys use the Bible and the bad guys openly hate the Bible. That is not true. In fact, when you read the Bible, what you're going to notice is the bad guys use the Bible almost as much as the good guys use the Bible. So for instance, Satan in the Bible says masquerades is an angel of light. So do his lies. They masquerade that way. The serpent in the garden is literally quoting God's words and twisting them back to Adam and Eve. The Pharisees are obviously twisting the scriptures. The book of Galatians talks about how Satan will sometimes appear as an angel of light. The super apostles in Second Corinthians, all of them are using God's word and twisting it. So here's the big idea that we want to

teach people to do is what we're called to do is test everything and then hold fast to what is good. The whole reason Paul called the Bereans noble is every time he finished teaching, they would examine the scriptures to see what he said was true. So let's do. Let's do. do that. Let's listen to our friend John Fugel song here and examine the scriptures to see if what he's saying is true. Here we go. You articulate the teachings of Jesus as inherently progressive teachings. We've got him killed, yeah. Yeah. Now, why do you think the left isn't able to utilize that? Okay, first, this is really important. So what this guy's argument is is that Jesus was progressive. Here's what you need to understand from a worldview perspective is

progressivism is not a self-standing ideology. Think about even the name progressivism. Progressivism is an attempt to listen, to progress past something. Now, if you're really, if you're a thinking person, the question you should always ask when somebody starts saying they are progressive, or talking about progressivism is, huh, what are they trying to progress past? What you're going to notice is that secular progressivism is an attempt to, quote, progress past the historic Christian morality and the teachings of the Bible. This is why I just want to say this. And dude, I get crushed for this constantly.

But it's just true. You will never meet somebody who becomes more and more progressive, but becomes more and more committed to a theologically conservative, historic understanding of the Bible and who Jesus was. You're never going to find that person. This, by the way, is why John Mark Comer, some Christians try to do this by trying to create a species of Christianity. They call it progressive Christianity. What I just said is why John Mark Comer one time pointed out that in his experience, progressive Christianity is just a stopover on somebody's way to post-Christianity. So a big idea culturally is that not all change. Progressivism wants to change things. Let's progress past where we've been as a nation, where we've been as a society. but here's what we understand as Christians is that not all change is progress.

Some things that the world calls progress, the Bible calls decay. And our friend John is going to show us some of those things. I wish I knew because there's so many progressive Christians who pay attention to what the guy actually says. You look at Matthew 25, right? That's Jesus giving his marching orders. The night he's arrested. It's the judgment of nations. He says, I will gather individuals and nations.

This is the whole, I was a stranger and you took me, and I was hungry and you fed me. He gives four criteria for what Christians or a Christian society will have to do. And it's to individuals and nations. And it's take care of the poor, take care of the sick, welcome the stranger, and be kind to those in prison. Nothing about screaming at when. All right. So first of all, really quick, this is important. What you're going to notice with progressive Christians and progressives that use the Bible as a weapon against Christians,

what you're going to notice is that here's their Shibboleth, if you know what that is. The Shibboleth for progressive Christians is that the Bible distinguishes between the role of the individual and the role of the state. So here's a quick theology. If you want to do a little fun homework, do a little fun Google search, Abraham Kuiper sphere sovereignty. This is called Kuiperian sphere sovereignty. What you're going to notice in the Bible is that in the Bible, God establishes three institutions. And that when those institutions stay in their God-given lanes and do their God-appointed roles, that it results. in incredible flourishing for human societies.

When one of the institutions tries to get out of its lane and do something that was assigned to one of the institutions in another lane, stuff gets really sticky, just like if all the cars on a highway started disobeying the lane lines. So with Abraham Kuyper, great Presbyterian theologian, that also ended up being the prime minister of Switzerland, he pointed out that in the Bible God establishes three institutions

of the family, the church, and the state. The role of the family is reproduction, the rearing of children, education, discipleship. The role of the church is what theologians have historically called word and sacrament, care for the poor, things like this. And then the role of the state, in the Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the role of the state are things like law and order, enforcing justice, the common defense. These are the biblical roles of these three things. When all three of these institutions stay in their lanes and do their God-given roles, great things happen. When they get out of their lanes, bad things happen. Now, what you just saw this, a fusil, I don't know how I pronounce this guy's name. What you just saw this guy do is he is

conflating the biblical role of the individual with the role of the state. Now, what he's wrong about is he says in Matthew 25 when Jesus gathers everybody at the end of time that he's judging and he says he gathers both nations and people. In Matthew 25, go read it for yourself. It says that Jesus will gather the nations to himself, but notice that in Matthew 25, Jesus is not judging governments. It specifically says he's judging individuals, sheep and goats. And so here's my rebuttal to what he's saying is that the Bible simply distinguishes between the role of the individual and the role of state. This is why, for instance, the Bible, for instance, it forbids individuals from, quote, living by the sword, but the Bible commands governments in Romans 13 to bear the sword.

This is why the Bible commands individual Christians to be people who love and care for the poor and feed the poor, but then when the Bible is speaking to a church government in First Thessalonians, it tells that church government to operate by the principle, if a person will not work, they shall not eat, differing roles, individual of church and state. This is also why you can apply this to immigration, why the Bible, and he alludes to this mistakenly, this is why the Bible tells individual Christians welcome the stranger, love the sojourner, welcome the immigrant. But then that same God and same Bible blesses a government when it builds a wall, Book of Nehemiah and other places, to protect his borders. So it's distinguishing between the role of the individual and the

role of state. This is really, really important to understand because here's what Jesus never commands. Jesus never commands governments to take money from people forcibly and then redistribute it as the government tries to step into the primary role of charity giver. The role of charity in the Bible is assigned to individual Christians and we should do that and to churches. So what the Bible wants is big church, small government. The Bible doesn't want small church, big government. I also just want to point this out. This Fugel song guy does this. When progressive people talk about generosity to the poor, what they really mean is voting for the government to take other people's money and use their money to be generous to the poor.

This is why, like, a few years ago when Bernie Sanders was running, he was like the generosity candidate. And then his tax returns came out. And I think he gave somewhere between like 1% and 2% of his personal income to charity. because when progressives talk about generosity to the poor, they're not actually talking about being generous to the poor. They're talking about voting for the government to forcibly take other people's money to be generous to the poor. Here's the other thing I want to say,

and then I want to move on. What you're going to notice, this is really interesting, is this is left-coded Christian nationalism, what this guy is advocating for. So what you'll notice is that in public discourse, when progressives apply biblical commands to government policy, It gets called things like mercy, compassion, seeking justice, all those things. But then when conservatives take biblical commands like you shall not murder and apply them into pro-life

laws or the biblical definition of marriage and then want to apply those into how the government defines marriage, when conservatives do it, it's scary Christian nationalism and you can't force your beliefs on other people. But again, when progressives do it, it's just seeking justice. And so here's what this is. This is left-coded Christian nationalism. Let's keep you on. Women outside clinics, nothing about being mean to trans kids,

nothing about believing in a talking snake. Jesus gives his marching orders right there. Where is that? All right. So here's the other thing you're going to notice. Again, left-coded Christian nationalism is what you just saw. So high school debate team understanding is, whoever controls the terms wins the argument. So you always got to watch for how someone frames

what is happening, and this play gets run on Christians constantly. So he says, what he says there is he says, let me get that, he says, Jesus says nothing about screaming at women outside of abortion clinics. Okay, but Jesus did say something about you shall not murder. you five through seven in the sermon of the mount, Jesus reinforces the biblical command not to murder, and he actually elevates the biblical command to not even have hatred in our hearts. So yeah, he did say something about that. He says, Jesus didn't say anything about being mean to trans kids. Again, watch this. As a Christian, you got to watch this. Whoever controls the terms wins the debate. If you reclassify disagreement as hate, that's like the go-to play of progressivism.

to differ is not to hate. Okay. And yes, Jesus did speak to this about disagreeing with queer theory and transgender ideology. Jesus specifically said in Matthew 19, I'm just going to read it. He said, haven't you read that at the beginning, the creator, quote, made them male and female. Jesus is affirming the biological vertical alignment between gender and sex right there and said, for this reason a man will leave his father or mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh therefore what god has joined together let no one separate

which you had right there is jesus himself one affirming biological uh biologically determined gender and sex jesus is uh affirming in the new testament the definition of marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman and Jesus, this is a whole different discussion, Jesus right there is affirming something that would be contra no-fault divorce laws. That's what's happening there. And then last he says he didn't say anything about believing in a talking snake.

Yes, Jesus did very explicitly believe in a quote-unquote talking snake from the book of Genesis. You'll notice when Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees, he says, you brood of vipers referencing a snake snake and he says you are of your father the devil okay so actually yeah Jesus said something about all of those things that stuff that's in Genesis right that's in Genesis yeah but it's why we'll

you'll never see the right wing fight to put a Jesus quote on a building on a courthouse or in a classroom wall yeah yeah okay uh I just disagree with this uh here's one thing that you'll notice you got to watch out for this um what progressive people do and progressive Christian Christians especially is they want to divide the words of Jesus from the rest of the Bible. And it's an attempt to divorce or here's, it's an attempt to rescue Jesus from the other things the Bible says that they don't like. This was the movement of, if you're around in like the 80s and 90s, this was red letter Christians.

And then what I'm noticing now is that progressive Christians, they really, really focus on, hey, we need to build an ethic on the Sermon of the Mount and the Sermon of the Mount and the Sermon of the Mount. And it's a goal to try to rescue the character of Jesus from the rest of the Bible that says things that they don't like. They don't do it. They don't follow the guy. They worship him because that's a lot easier than following his inconveniently woke teachings. Okay. So the implication that you'll see here is that conservative Christians, they don't follow Jesus. It's the progressives that do. And again, I'm not trying to beat up on a movement, but I will say that ideas have consequences and that when an ideology is explicitly trying to progress past historic Christian morality and ethics, it bears that fruit.

So what he's saying there is like, it's just legit not true, and Christians get gaslit with this a lot. So for instance, this is not to say that people who are conservative are perfect and people who or progressive are evil, is just data. So for instance, while progressive people, again, their definition of generosity is voting for the government to take other people's money and be generous. Conservatives, according to data, are about three times as more generous to the poor

with their own personal money in time than progressives. If you remember this a few years ago when the Syrian refugee crisis happened, the New York Times did this article, and their minds were blown. The New York Times, like, they could not comprehend this. Because when they went around to all of these refugee centers, and they were finding, like,

who are the people who are volunteering in these refugee centers and caring for Syrian refugees, they couldn't understand it was almost all evangelical Christians. And their minds were blown. So they had to do like an entire article about it. And they couldn't understand, wait, why are the people that are voting for strong borders, the people who are also the ones helping the refugees that ended up crossing the borders. Again, we just keep going back to this.

It's because Bible-believing Christians have a theological, biblical understanding of the differing roles of the individual in the state and godly spirit-filled Christians, they want the government to do its God-given role. Romans 13, bear the sword. We are law and order people. We are support police officers people.

we are we are we are we are protect borders common defense people but then at an individual level spirit-filled Christians naturally love serve and bless anybody that's in front of us again I'll just point this out conservative Christians adopt children you hear this a lot progressives will say about conservatives they'll say oh they're not really pro-life they're just pro-birth Well, that's like literally insane. The data is that conservative Christians adopt children at a rate almost three times higher than the national average. And the other thing I just want to say is he said, oh man, you know, they don't follow Jesus like us progressives. I just want to say it.

So really what he's implying is, man, you know who does follow Jesus? The people who are trying to trans the kids and voting for policies that have killed 40 million babies, like actually committed like a six time over Holocaust and LGBT, all the things. So those are the ones who are actually following Jesus, according to Mr. Fugel Song. Let's keep going.

You talk about this alpha-brough movement that's happening in the Christ world. I like alpha-brose. Let's see what he says. I trace that straight from the crusades up to Pete Higgseth's humiliating tattoo. Oh, now you've gone to, for it. No, no, no. That is blasphemous, right? You know what? Secretary of Yeagermeister thinks it's all about.

The violence, God wills it. That's what they said when they were waging violence against Muslims and Jews in the Crusades. All right, so here's a question. Does God ever will violence? And he brings up the Crusades. This is really important. Again, you got to remember this.

The goal of progressivism is to get people to progress past a historic Christian understanding and a historic Christian morality. One of the ways that progressivism does that is it re, dude, this is huge, man. Someday we'd do a whole pod on examples of this. One of the ways progressivism does this is it rewrites history with Christians as the bad guys as often as possible. One of the chief examples of this is the Crusades. So like he's casting the Crusades as wicked, evil, bloodthirsty Christians who just marched into these, you know, on these.

innocent, you know, Islamic nations and just started slaughtering people out of their bloodthirsty hate-filled hearts. Very frankly, if you want, very frankly, in general, now obviously, war is hell, there's a reason that's a quote, and terrible things happen in any war. So this is in no way an endorsement of everything that happened in the Crusades or any war. But in general, the Crusades zoomed out were completely justified, just war. according to Christian just war theory. They were defensive wars. They were not a conquest.

They were a reconquest that was in response to 700 years of Islamic conquest. Go do, this is an easy Google search. Go look and see where the very few the crusade battles took place. They all take place in nations that sometime over the last 700 years had been predominantly Christian nations that 700 years of Islamic jihad jihadi conquest had come in and slaughtered Christians for seven centuries. So again, this is what progressivism does is in order to convince you to progress past Christianity, it rewrites history with Christians as the bad guys, and that's a little crazy. The opposite of glamorous, unsexy Jesus who commands us to love our enemies,

turn the other cheek. He also gets around to opposing the death penalty. He tells you don't trust people who pray in public. Whoopsie Daisy, okay, that's not quite true. So here's the implication is, his implication is that it's unchrist-like for governments to do any violence, like when he talks about the Deuce Vault, the God Wilsett tattoo, or to bear the sword.

Very frankly, that's just wrong. Let me read this from Romans 13. When the Bible is defining the role of the government, it says, let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those, that exist have been instituted by God. Verse two. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resist what God has appointed, and those who resist will encourage judgment. Verse three, this is huge.

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. So Romans 13-3 defines one of the roles of the government as to be a, quote, terror to those who do wrong. So whenever people talk about, or they cast it as bad that the presence of police forces, incite fear in people that kind of thing. Well, the biblically defined role of the government is to be a, quote, terror to those who do bad. Now, watch this. How is the government supposed to do that,

according to the Bible? Romans 13.3. Would you have no fear of the one who's in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good, but if you do wrong, be a fear. afraid, for he does not. Now, before I read this next phrase, again, we're asking the question, is it wrong for human governments to do violence? The fusel ganger guy is implying that the answer

is yes in his best-selling separation of church and hate book. But let's see what the Bible says. If you do wrong, be afraid. For he, the governing authorities, does not bear the sword in vain. for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. So this is what you're seeing right here is the difference between progressivism and Christianity at their very root is they all boil down to a difference in belief about the nature of mankind. Progressivism mistakenly believes that mankind is basically good. So we actually don't need police forces, we don't need firearms, we don't need militaries. What we actually need are therapists and counselors. Because if we just reason with people enough, they're basically good and they'll eventually

start doing good things again. This is why progressivism always veers into things like defund the police, because they believe that people are basically good and that it's actually evil to treat people, you know, to bear the sword. But Christians correctly understand that, no, no, people are not basically good. Actually, the biblical doctrine of mankind is, in the words of historic theologians, is total depravity, that all of their thoughts are inclined towards evil all of the time. So this is why, check this out, that is really important. A biblical understanding of evil is that evil never stops itself, so it must be stopped. This is why a Christian understanding of the government is one that bears the sword

and uses force when necessary, including the death penalty. So you'll see this, interestingly, in Jesus, in Jesus and the New Testament. So for instance, Jesus specifically tells people to sell their cloaks and buy a sword. Jesus affirms the moral goodness of a husband, dad, and father, having things like firearms in his home, having weapons in his home to defend his family. That's Jesus. You get, this is really interesting, people miss this. When people hear John the Baptist preaching

and they repent after hearing John the Baptist preaching, there were Roman soldiers who were active military enlisted men who come up to John the Baptist and they ask him, hey, we love Jesus and we want to repent and follow Jesus. What should we do? And this is what John the Baptist said. He said, do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation and be satisfied with your wages. Notice what John the Baptist did not say was leave the military because governments using force and doing violence is wrong.

He didn't say that. Again, you get to Romans chapter 13. And when Romans 13 says that the biblical role of the government is to, quote, bear the sword, it's literally talking about the death penalty. the death penalty is a good, righteous, and just thing when administered righteously because it does two things. It stops someone who is going to hurt, harm, and murder other people. It stops them from doing it again. And it's a public dissuasion against those things. So, like, actually, we should probably see more of that. In fact, this is the whole one of the podcast. In the Old Testament when God gives the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy, the death penalty was instituted actually to be performed publicly, public executions. Why? To be a

terrifying, sobering dissuasion against evil people feeling unrestrained in doing their evil things. So, Fugelganger, or whatever his name is, is simply wrong. To be seen, he tells you to pay your taxes. I mean, this guy could not run for office in the state of Louisiana. Let me just say, I am not here to say that politics is not a dirty business, and I am not sure that he's wrong, that Jesus would not be able to make it in politics. There's a reason that a government killed him. But he's every bit, whether he's real or not, an atheist, this book's for you too, whether he's a real guy or the original hippie or the original innocent brown skin man executed by the state. the actual team.

You really need to pay attention to this. So he said, the original brown-skinned man executed by the state. Now watch out. Stuff like that is going to get snuck at you really cool. It happens so fat. You don't even realize it happened to you. But there's actually a little play that's getting run on you. What progressives will do, and by the way, everybody does this,

but progressives are the chief offenders, is they'll selectively edit and reframe Jesus to make Jesus sound like he fits as a one-to-one correlation to a modern progressive, like, impulse or cause. So, you know, 2015, Ferguson, Missouri happens, and all of a sudden, everybody's talking about how Jesus was a brown-skinned man executed by the state. And again, it's selective editing and reframing of Jesus to make him sound like a progressive cause. But what you'll notice is that it's selective editing, and they'll always, like, leave out other parts of Jesus. So I just want to, again, you may have heard me say this before.

You can selectively edit Jesus to sound like he fits any costs. Again, you can say, yet Jesus grew up as part of a traditional patriarchal family. Jesus was unvaccinated. Jesus was part of the majority culture in his area. Jesus commanded people to buy weapons. Jesus loved his country and his home nation. Jesus fed the poor without raising taxes. But what this guy does, Fugel Song, is he's trying to selectively edit Jesus as a mascot for his cause.

But you got to remember this. Jesus is a Lord. he is not a mascot. Teachings of the guy are as threatening to authoritarian power now as they were 2,000 years ago. That's true. That's true. And I keep waiting for the Democratic Party. I mean, Buttigieg does it.

James Tala Rico in Texas is doing some great stuff. I want to see more because I'm sick and tired of seeing my parents' faith used as a cloaking device for meanness. And we are sick and tired of seeing people use. his parents' faith as a cloaking device for evil. Thanks for tuning in to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We pray today's episode helped you take a step forward in life, culture, and faith as you live free in Christ. If it encouraged you, be sure to rate, review, and share the podcast,

and don't forget to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. Join us for Lake Point Church online every weekend and find more resources at lakepoint.church slash live free. We'll see you next time. Thank you.