Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 266 | New Age vs. Christianity, Part 1 | Guest: Steven Bancarz

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Steven Bancarz explains how ideas such as astrology, spiritual energy, universalism, psychics, aliens, reincarnation, and self-love are all impacting the church and society as a whole today. He also walks us through his journey from enjoying success as a New Age teacher to transforming into a born-again Christian. Part one of a two-part, jam-packed episode of Relatable. Steven Bancarz's Website: reasonsforjesus.com Today’s Sponsor: Hydrant creates flavored electrolyte packets you mix directly into your water to make hydrating your body easy and delicious. Go to DrinkHydrant.com/ALLIE and enter promo code ALLIE.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. So this is part one of a two-part interview that I am doing with Christian apologist Stephen Bancars. He left the new age a few years ago after making a lot of money in the new age industry and came to Christ. and now has spent the past few years of his life, being an apologist for Christian theology,

for biblical theology, and helping people recognize the deceit of the new age, and specifically how the new age is unfortunately infiltrating the church. So that's what we're going to talk about. This turned out to be such an awesome and such a wonderful and long conversation that we ended up splitting it into two separate episodes. but both parts of the conversation are equally powerful. So after you listen to Part 1, wait for Part 2 to come out and make sure that you listen to that as well.

Okay, without further ado, here is Stephen Bancars. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm sure that a lot of people who listen to this podcast might follow you as well and maybe even know your story. But for those who don't know, can you tell them who you are and what you do? Yeah. So I came out of the New Age movement back in fall of

2015 and prior to that my career my job was to be a new age writer a new age author online and I had really one of the largest new age websites in the world averaging hundreds of thousands of views a day and I was a lead author for a while on the largest new age website in the world and it was making me 40, 50,000 dollars a month in ad revenue and as a 21 year old 22 year old you know you think you're living the dream and by worldly standards you kind of are Right. But from a spiritual perspective, I thought this was God blessing me. This was the universe, my metaphor for God at the time, blessing me for waking humanity up to a higher state of consciousness and helping, you know, raise the vibration of the planet. I thought it was helping further human evolution by promoting this kind of teaching, which we'll get into a little bit later. But yeah, I came from a Christian background. I was born and raised in a Christian household, homeschooled under a Christian curriculum, went to Christian private school. When I was in high school, obviously sin got the better of me and I just fell off the deep end. But the topic of aliens came to me when I was in high school.

I was watching a program called Ancient Aliens on the History Channel. And they were presenting information that seemed to go against the biblical world you I had been raised with. I couldn't fit it into the Genesis creation narrative. If we really have been visited by extraterrestrials from other star systems for thousands of years, what does that say about the exclusivity of Christ and the cross? If there's 30,000 intelligent species that live in our galaxy alone, did Christ have to go and incarnate and die on a cross on every single planet? On what day did God say let there be aliens?

So this seemed to make me think that Christianity was just one piece of the puzzle instead of being the entire picture. And a lot of the people on this program, ancient aliens, they are new age teachers, people like Dr. Stephen Greer, people like David Wilcock. And so I started to get into some of their material. It's kind of a package deal. And they were the only ones who were really giving me answers to the questions I had. I hadn't seen these topics addressed by Christians. They certainly aren't talked about in the church. And so I thought the new age interpretation of ET phenomenon of abduction reports,

I thought that was the only game in town. And so this kind of led me down a rabbit hole where now I'm practicing meditation. I'm getting my hands on contact material that these ETs are apparently giving mankind. It sounds crazy, but this is what happens in the New Age movement. And I'm practicing out-of-body experiences, waking up outside of my body, lucid dreaming, meditation, psychedelic drugs. And my goal is to try and figure out what is all this, and how does Christ fit into this? And so I had a completely redefined and re-understood version of Jesus. And every new-age teacher does, Eckhart Tolle Deepak Trooper, Marianne Williamson. They all twist Christ to fit some new age paradigm. But I got neck deep in this stuff, created a Facebook page in 2012 called Spirit

Science and Metaphysics. It grew to over half a million by the time of January 2014. Then I launched my website and that's when, you know, I started experiencing success in this area as a teacher, had an encounter with Christ in January of, no, sorry, September of 2015. It's when I just fell at the feet of Christ in a moment of brokenness. I bottomed out. emotionally, spiritually, mentally, you know, I was poor in spirit. I had nothing to show for my life. Internally, externally, I had everything I wanted, living in a 4,000 square foot house as a 22-year-old being your own boss. Like, from the outside looking in, I had everything. I was depraved. You know, in Ephesians it says, you were darkness and then you were light.

It's not that you have darkness in you. It's that you are darkness. Like your heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. And I came to terms with that. And I really saw upon confessing sin to people in my life that ended up hurting them, the confession hurt them. That's when I was like, I knew I needed to be fixed, but I also knew I had wronged God, that I had sinned against the God I knew existed but had been suppressing, right? And so our problem isn't, a problem isn't that we don't know who God is.

Our problem is we know God, but don't acknowledge him, right? That's Romans 1, because to get closer to God is to get closer to the guilt. in shame that remains in our conscience, the skeletons in our closet, basically. So I finally just laid it all the feet of Christ, wept at his feet, I'm sorry, whoever you are, I want all of you, I'm all in with you. And he revealed himself to me. Spiritually, he showed up, not physically, not visibly, but his presence just overwhelmed me and I couldn't stand up and his presence started to fill me. It was in front of me, but it was also like within me and around me. and I got born again.

I was experiencing what it is and what it means to be born again. You know, John chapter 3, unless you're born of the spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. And that is when, for about five minutes, I was just getting wrecked, getting wrecked by the presence of Jesus, the manifest, spiritual, literal presence of Jesus. And I went back inside my house after, and I was like, I'm wrong. I was wrong about everything. This is so simple. Jesus is Lord. He's the son of God.

some complex mystical thing. And I started to see all these connections that I hadn't been able to see before because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. He comes and lives inside of you upon the hearing with faith when you repent and put your faith in Christ. The Spirit comes and indwells you. And he leads us into all truth. He guides us. He teaches us. Even if we don't have a chapter and verse, he will lead us and direct us toward the conclusion of that chapter and verse until we get there, if that makes sense. And so I repented. A few days later, I went online and I was like, I'm sorry, guys. I've been wrong. I've been leading you all astray. These practices are wrong. They're at the very best, useless, at the worst demonic, and they're all set up to keep you away from

salvation in Christ. And for the last four and a half years, I've been in full-time apologetics ministry. And yeah, that's my testimony in a nutshell. And it's good to be in the truth. Yeah. What was the tipping point for you that made you look around and say, hang on just a second. Everything that I have believed and taught and gotten money from is wrong. What kind of pushed you, obviously, the Holy Spirit? But was there an event or something that happened that pushed you to repentance? Yeah. What it was was recognizing the fruitlessness and futility of the practices, the philosophy, and the worldview I had been implementing into my life insofar as they gave me actually zero freedom.

over my mind, my emotions, my will, I was a slave to sin. The Bible says whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. I was a sin slave. And I felt like I couldn't control myself. I couldn't help it. My heart was just busted up and broken from my past and it desired things that shouldn't desire. You know, Jesus says adulterous, thoughts, murders, thefts, these things come out of the heart and defile a person. The problem is we need a heart transplant. And basically, I was realizing think my worldview could not effectively act as a remedy for my emotional brokenness and my depravity, my sinful depravity. And basically I had to confess to a person in my life who I was with at the time that I'd been living a double life behind their back essentially. And I confessed

this and it wrecked her. Obviously it wrecked me that I had wrecked her. And she was close to my mom. So we both went back to my parents' house. And my mom was totally all put together and relaxed because she's like, this is perfect timing. She's like, I've been praying for this kind of moment for years. So she was like, are you guys ready to give your life to the Lord yet? And she's like the most solid Christian I even know I've ever met in my life. And I was like, yeah, you know what?

I'm going to give my life to Christ. So I said a prayer of salvation, which to me meant I'm going to allow you Jesus. to invade my life as you really are. I don't really know what it means to trust in you for my salvation. I didn't understand the atonement. I don't believe I got born again in that moment. But that was when I was going to say to Jesus, and I did say to Jesus, I'm not going to fit you into this New Age paradigm anymore.

I'm going to be self-honest in my exploration of you. And then two weeks later passed after I said that prayer of salvation. I'm still living in sin, and I don't have all the pieces together yet. And then two weeks later passed, and that's when I had to confess another round of sin. sin that was worse than the first. And that's when I realized I'm wicked, I'm depraved, I'm broken, and I need, I need forgiveness. I don't just need to be fixed internally. I need forgiveness from God for sinning against the living God. And yeah, that was what led to that moment when I went outside

and fell at his feet and just wept. And yeah, he's faithful. You know, he says all who seek will find whoever knocks the door will be open to them and he says, I by no means will turn away those who come to me. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Stephen, can you tell us what the new age is?

I know it's a little bit of an amorphous term that can encompass a lot of different things, but it's really important to me that my audience can kind of recognize. some of the aspects of it, not just the extraterrestrial things, which may be obvious to a lot of Christians, but talk about just what the New Age philosophy is and maybe even how it manifests itself in ways that Christians might not recognize. Right. So when we talk about the New Age Movement or New Age spirituality, that's really an umbrella term. It's a little bit nebulous, but it's kind of, it refers to this bucket of worldview distinctives and bucket of practices that go under this title, but really they draw a little bit from Buddhism,

a little bit from Eastern mysticism, a little bit from Gnosticism, and esoteric philosophy from the late 1800s, from Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky's School of Thoughts. She started. It draws a little bit from the kind of thing you would hear Ram Dass talk about back in his heyday, his glory days. And so, and Alistair Crowley a little bit as well.

But what we're talking about, essentially, is a worldview that, for one, occupies, I would say, I would say it's the biggest threat to the church today. It's the biggest threat to Christians today is the New Age movement. You have 27% of the American population who identify as spiritual but not religious, according to a Pew study center. Pew Research, Pew study. Yes, yeah. And what was interesting is that there was a study released by Pew in October of 2018. they found was that 61% of the American population holds at least one new age belief.

Wow. And they only tested for four beliefs. They only tested for the belief that psychics offer some kind of reliable insight into the future, the belief that there's spiritual energy within physical, material things, the belief in astrology and the belief in reincarnation, right? And it was 62% of the American population, but 61% of professing Christian. also held to at least one of these beliefs. They didn't test for beliefs like who believes that, you know, man is intrinsically divine. Who believes that meditation and yoga are helpful

spiritual practices, not just physical practices, who believes in karma, who believes that the pineal gland has some kind of relationship to one spirituality? If you were to test for all these beliefs as well, in addition to those four, I would say you're looking at 80 to 90 percent. Wow. of the American population holds to some kind of new age belief. And this is being taught by Russell Brand, Jim Carrey, Ellen DeGeneres in varying degrees. Oprah Winfrey has been popularizing this stuff like crazy. And so it's really coming down from the highest levels of social influence. And it's no longer just some kind of fringe topic on the outskirts of society where you've got some hippies in Sedona, Arizona dropping acid.

Now you have some of the best-selling authors of all time. the best-selling book series of all time, like conversations with God, for example, our new age, I was so surprised to see Marianne Williamson take a run at things, because I'm thinking this is a new age teacher I used to listen to. Have you heard what she has to say about Christ? She believes that Christ is something within man. She believes that she is Christ. She believes that when she's not acting fearfully, she is Christ. Christ is what remains when everything else dissipates, every egoic self-deception about being an individual person, and she taps into unity consciousness, we're all one, all is God, God is all, that's when I'm Christ.

Right. And so that's one of the distinctives I want to talk about is man's ontology. This is a really, really big issue, and it's helpful for Christians to know this one thing in particular, is that the New Age movement would equivocate God and man. They would say God and man share ontology. They share nature, essence, and substance, because they believe in pantheism. So they believe that the universe is divine. Pan means all. Theism comes from the Greek word Theos, which means God. All is God. That is the

theism and the philosophy of New Age spirituality. Some would say God is also transcendent and beyond space and time, in which case you have pan-antheism, where the universe is God, but God also exists beyond the universe in some sense. And so I was a pan-entheist. But the point is, when you redefine God to be the substance of reality and the very essence and core nature of every molecule, that necessarily means that that's also my identity and my core substance and my core nature. Man is God and God is man. Right? And this is how they understand Jesus to be someone who self-discovered his own intrinsic deity, his intrinsic divinity.

And he has just as much deity as we do and just as much as the Pharisees did. They just weren't aware of it yet. So Jesus is someone who was enlightened and self-awoke to his true ontology and lived from that state of mind. that there's ultimately one of us here where all the creator experiencing itself from a different point of view but the bible says things very clearly like in psalm 9 verse 20 put fear in them oh lord let the nations know they are but men Isaiah 31 3 is a big verse the Egyptians are man and not god their horses are flesh and not spirit you have the king of tyre in ezekiel 28 the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14 and King Herod and Acts 12, those are the only three people in

Scripture, aside from Jesus who could claim deity because he is true deity, he's God by nature. But when you have mere men claiming that they're God or likening themselves to God or a God, they were all issued capital punishment from Yahweh himself. So the biblical precedent for divinity claimers is, you know, the death penalty. And we'd expect to see a better precedent if God wanted us walking around thinking, oh, everything's God. We're all God by nature. Another big thing that the New Age movement will teach and promote is something we could call universalism

that all paths ultimately lead back to heaven or the spirit world, as they'll call it. But all roads lead to Rome, essentially. It doesn't really matter which path you take, which religious path you take, because the destination's the exact same. And they believe that the spirit world is not heaven. It's kind of like this neutral

ethereal realm where you go, you do a life review, you hang out with your spirit guide to get put into like a soul group where you're with other souls who are around your same level of development and maybe you'll take some classes and so forth in the spirit world before you choose your next incarnation and come back to earth where you plan your life in advance and you reincarnate so you can learn the lessons that you need to learn in the next life for the sake of your soul's development. And keep in mind too, this sounds crazy. This might sound like complete, you know, know, wankery to some of your audience. But this is coming from books that have sold millions of copies, the destiny of souls, Journey of Souls, Dr. Michael Newton, we're talking about, you know, Dr. Jim Tucker. This stuff is promoted all over the place, and it's very, very prevalent and prominent in New Age spirituality. And the Bible says in Hebrews 927, it's been appointed unto man to live once. And after that comes the judgment, reincarnation is impossible, biblically. we're given one chance and Jesus Christ paid our penalty in full in the cross so there's nothing there's no karma we have to alleviate in the next life if Jesus paid everything in full we have one shot at this life and the Bible is very clear about that but they would teach that we all go back to this neutral spirit world and we kind of like hang out for a little bit and then choose our next incarnation it's it's this never-ending cycle until we work our way up this scale of enlightenment and soul development until we finally bypass the need to reincarnate and then we we can just do work teaching other souls in the spirit world as we work our way up back to full

and true unity with the Creator. Another thing that people would be helpful for people to know is that they would treat all religions as being equally valid as one another. So this would be called religious pluralism where there's really no difference in the weight between the worldview claims that Islam would make versus Buddhism versus Christianity, for example. All religions are equally valid and equally true. and you see this kind of rhetoric in our culture all the time now where it's apparently like politically

incorrect to imply to let alone say but to merely imply someone's view about God is wrong or their spirituality is wrong. The New Age movement would say they're all equally valid. They all lead us to the same destination. There's a lot of different things that New Age talks about. But if people could understand that's just this one point, that man is not God by nature, there's a distinction between man and God, there's a creator creation distinction that we're ontologically separated from God and we're relationally separated from God through sin. That needs to be our starting point. Ontological and relational separation from God and therefore we need a mediator,

therefore we need someone to reconcile us. Versus if you put man in God's place, he can have relationship with God in and of himself because he's ultimately deity by nature. God is a present or a force that exists within him. and that's really what the New Age world view hinges upon is the deity of man, which goes back to Genesis 3, by the way, where Satan promises Eve that through special knowledge, in this case, special knowledge of self, special knowledge of your true nature, you can become as God or as the gods.

It's the same lie just repackaged and wrapped up in a bow of political correctness now. Right. Oh, gosh, I have so many questions to ask you. One thing that I want to point out, going back to what you, said a few minutes ago about the importance in the new age of kind of self-discovery, this journey to figure out who you really are and to manifest this inner power. Yes, we see it among those new age teachers that maybe people would be able to point out, especially Christians like Marianne Williamson and things like that. But I also think it's important to point out that this manifests itself in a lot more subtle ways that are or seem vaguely Christian that I think a lot

of young Christian women are attracted to. And it comes in the form of this kind of self-love world and books dedicated to self-discovery and self-fulfillment that sound vaguely biblical. You know, they start with the idea, you know, that God loves you and maybe you're made in the image of God and therefore you have purpose, which of course is true. But then it says, in order to become more spiritual, in order to become more successful, you need to go deeper and deeper inward and to find, you know, that inner goddess, who you really are, if it weren't for societal expectations, if it weren't for, you know, religious standards, if it weren't for all of these things and institutions that are holding you back, who you are deep down on the inside is perfect. And once you find her,

once you learn who she is through different personality tests or whatever, once you learn to love that perfect goddess deep down inside, then you will be fulfilled. It is not presented in a new age way. It's presented in a more practical, even entrepreneurial way or self-help way. And I think it's important, too, for women to realize that that is a part of new age teaching and mystical, un-Christian, unbiblical teaching as well. Would you agree? I would. I would say I would agree primarily because it has to do with there being something intrinsically good that's hidden and embedded within you and your life's purpose and what's going to launch you into success is you tapping into that and drawing it out whether it's just some kind of sovereign power that you carry

within yourself a higher self they might use that kind of vernacular your higher self your real self your true self you'll usually sprinkle in cliches about the universe loving you the universe has got your back um they speak about providence as though it's almost like some kind of deep and they usually kind of weave this into their narrative, but I would say it's completely antithetical to the biblical worldview and it's much more comparable to new age spirituality, which emphasizes there really is something intrinsically good, deeply embedded within man. And Jesus tells us the exact opposite. You know, Matthew Chapter 5 tells you the path to live the life God created you to live.

It's to take really the exact opposite route. Blessed are the poor in spirit. right blessed are those who mourn blessed are the meek right what does it mean to be poor in spirit right blessed of the poor and spirit for they shall see god to be poor in spirit means to admit to yourself that you're spiritually emotionally and psychologically bankrupt you're just completely devoid of goodness on those levels and that's a blow to a lot of people's egos but you can't get away from that in scripture we're alienated from the life of god you know colossians will 121. We're dead and trespasses and sins. Ephesians 2. The heart is desperately wicked.

You know, Jeremiah is 17. Now, that doesn't mean that we're not made in God's image. It doesn't mean we don't have intrinsic value and intrinsic worth to God. We do. And that was made apparent when he paid a high price in Christ to reconcile us unto himself. We're precious to God. We have value to God. But if we're looking to something in ourselves to be our source of redemption and our source of life purpose, nobody, lets us down more than us. Nobody lies to us more than us. We're the problem. And that's what the Christian world you make is very plain and clear. And it's so liberating when you can realize my goal in this life is not to be good. There's one good who's God. There's one person who is morally perfect,

who's Jesus. My goal is to partner with him. Right? It's not about me and my works and my spiritual level. It's about Jesus and his works and who he is spiritually. And I just partner with him. I throw myself onto him in dependency versus you become self-dependent. You become self-sufficient. And it's a trap. It just inflates your ego. It's premised on a false ontology about who you truly are. And it's okay to admit that, you know, you're not everything you want to be. We're all not. That's what that's the purpose of the cross. Yep. Jesus paid the price. for our mistakes, for our deficiencies, and we're to partner with him for the forgiveness of sins. And so we can actually be indewelt by God instead of just pretending we are and be empowered

to live the life he created us for. You said it best when you said that that is actually a freeing reality. But if you only look at the new age, for example, or you just kind of look at some of the mantras in a more superficial sense, those mantras and those principles sound freeing that, wow, it's all up to me. All I have to do is tap into this inner power and I can be successful. All I have to do is depend on myself, love myself, be confident in what I can do, and then I can find fulfillment. And it feels and seems freeing at the time that it all depends on me, that it's within my control. We all have a sinful desire for a control and really to be our own gods. But the reality is, is that once you realize that you're not actually enough, that you're

not enough for yourself that you've done all of the self-discovery, that you've done all the self-fulfillment, you've repeated all the motivational mantras and done all the 10th step programs to finally become successful. And it's still not enough. You're still not satisfied. You're still not fulfilled. Then you realize that the so-called freedom of the new age and so-called what I call the cult of self-affirmation is actually very burdensome. And the real freedom, the real good news is realizing that we're not enough, that you don't have. have to be enough. Your self-love doesn't have to be enough. Your self-confidence and self-fulfillment, none of that has to be enough because it never will be enough. There is so much freedom and good

news to be found in the reality that we are insufficient and dependent on someone who has promised to be our sufficiency. That's right. And it's interesting because when you actually apply that kind of worldview to your life as you're describing and critiquing right now, that's basically what I lived from. And there is so much pressure you put on yourself. You're living under the weight of an expectation that you simply can't fulfill. Right. Right. And it puts you in this hamster wheel of spiritual works. Right. And so when I would wake up in the morning as a new ageer, I'm thinking, okay, I got to say my positive affirmations. And I got to say them out loud. I should say them out because of the law of attraction and the universe is going to bring into my reality that which is aligned with my dominant thoughts words and emotions so i got to make sure what's my mindset today where are my emotions today are they aligned with the destiny i'm trying to manifest and create in the material world if not i got to do something to raise my vibration oh i should be meditating i got to make sure meditating each day got to make sure my chakras are cleaned are my chakras cleaned have i been doing some crystal work lately have i been decalcifying my pineal gland so i can have better access to i've got to make sure my chakras are cleaned are my chakras are i

the things of the spiritual. So have I been taking the right supplements, have I been doing pineal gland detoxes, have I been trying to contact higher entities or my higher self? Have I been, man, it was crazy because the amount of things you have to do as a new ageer compared to the amount of things you have to do as a Christian, right? When your life is centered around you and your works and your level of spiritual advancement, you can't do enough, right? And that's why one of the mantras in the New Age movement is enlightenment is a destination. It's a journey. It's not a destination. It's like, well, it's a journey to where? And when does the journey end? And when have I done enough? You know, versus Jesus on the cross, you know, it is finished. Amen. Okay. So I don't

have to wake up each day and be mindful of my being positive enough. my chakra is clean enough is my vibration high enough? Have I meditated enough? Have I forgiven people, you know, ancestors of mine from hundreds of years ago from some sin of theirs that's causing me to have to live out the karma of their sins in the present day? All this weird stuff that keeps you focused on everything except I'm a sinner, right? I'm a sinner and I need salvation. And so when I came to Christ, I remember staring at my New Age bookshelf and I had just had all these New Age books that I'd been reading and researching and trying to figure out all the answers. And I had peace for the first time because I knew the truth, right? The Holy Spirit is self-validating. He's self-affirming. And when he lives inside of

you, you have rest. For the first time, Hebrews 4, God has permitted us to enter into the rest of Christ. And we can cease from our works, even as God has ceased from his works. Right? And we have that in Christ, that Sabbath rest is in Christ. And that was completely unique for me to feel rest and be like, I have the truth now. Now it's just a matter of growing in the truth. Right. Versus I'm on this never-ending pursuit of self-empowerment and trying to figure things out just to stand before the judgment seat of Christ one day. Right.

Just to die and realize I haven't been self-honest with myself about God or about the person of Jesus who has been unconsciously and continuously harassing my conscience my entire life. I've never followed up with that. And so, yeah, the self-empowerment movement, I believe that we should know who we are. How do I actually feel? How do I actually see the world? We don't want our identities to be lost in our social group or peer network or in other people's expectations and so forth. Just to have an authentic self-relationship. That's important, even as a Christian.

But that's not the end game. And people treat that as being the end game. And, you know, it's going to leave you disappointed at the end. It's going to leave you on this hamster wheel of spiritual works where you're always just trying to improve, improve, improve, get more dialed in and more dialed in, premised on this idea that you have the interest within yourself versus you don't. You know, Jesus is God's final answer. Hey, this is Steve Day.

If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.