Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 385 | Tim Keller's Warning about Death & Christian Nationalism

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Today we are discussing recent comments by Tim Keller, famous theologian and pastor. Pastor Tim Keller has been diagnosed with cancer, and his recent article in the Atlantic sheds light on how he is dealing with the finality of earthly life. His profound thoughts in this area should be of help to any Christians who finds their faith shaken by the suffering that death brings. We also discuss his take on Christian nationalism and how Pastor Keller gets a few things wrong here. What is really the bigger danger to America, Marxism or capitalism? Lastly, we'll bring up a curriculum in California that's making headlines for asking students to chant to an ancient Aztec god. --- Today's Sponsor: Fundrise: See for yourself how 130k investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started. Go to Fundrise.com/RELATABLE. --- Past Episodes Mentioned: Ep 370: The Shocking Anti-History, Anti-Science Influence on Public Education | Guest: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson https://apple.co/3rSfw2y Ep 353: Our Kids Are Learning What?! | Guest: Chris Rufo https://apple.co/3lh3Cgq Ep 263: Why Social Justice Can't Solve Racism | Guests: Virgil Walker & Darrell B. Harrison https://apple.co/3cBPVo7 --- Show Links: The Atlantic: "Growing My Faith in the Face of Death" https://bit.ly/30KhDtk The Christian Post: "Tim Keller: Church's affiliation with Republicanism has given Christian nationalism 'a place to incubate'" https://bit.ly/3eGPXxH The Christian Post: "California 'ethnic studies' proposal teaches kids white Christian are evil, chant to Aztec gods" https://bit.ly/3cs37vK --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Today, we're not going to talk about the news. We're not going to talk about the Grammys. We're not going to talk about politics. We're actually going to talk about two articles by Tim Keller, one of them about death, one of them about Christian nationalism. And then I'll give you some of my thoughts on that. And that will lead us into a conversation, not a conversation, but a story, actually. coming out of the Christian Post about California Ethnic Studies Plan that teaches kids to chant to an Aztec God and encourages human sacrifice and how that ties into what we're going to talk about today and where I think our concerns should actually lie as far as which kind of ideologies are infiltrating Christianity and opposing Christianity. There's a lot that I want to talk about today and there's a lot that I want to talk about this week. The Grammys did happen last night. I know most of you are like me. You probably didn't watch. You don't care all that much. But it is interesting to look at these cultural moments and to study what we as a society

care about, what we deem okay, what we deem worth celebrating, and then what we deem worth castigating. So a lot of people have pointed out, for example, that Cardi B's Wop was the song of the year. But we are too, we are too now culturally sensitive to read something like an 80-year-old Dr. Seuss book, which has politically incorrect and potentially offensive depictions of people. That is worth cancellation, but self-objectification in the name of female empowerment is something that we are going to embrace. We're going to be pretended to be offended by one, but empowered by the other. And I think the question that we have to ask ourselves is by what standard? And we are going to talk about that on Wednesday. It's going to actually be an episode about

women because I don't know if you guys knew this, but this is International Women's Month. Or is it International Women's History Month? I don't know. But it's been around for a long time. Like this is not just a new creation that has come about in the past few years. Women's History Month or Women's Month, whatever it is, has been around for a long time. Like I remember this being something in college when I was in a sorority that we celebrated that we talked about in all of that. And I want to talk about what is a woman. from a biblical perspective, should we celebrate women's history or women's empowerment month? And how does Christianity see women in a way that is different than how the world sees women?

How does Christ celebrate, elevate, and approach women in a way that is different than how the world does? How does Christianity, in our version of empowerment, how does it compare and contrast to feminism? And so we're going to talk about that on Wednesday. It's going to be Women Wednesday. We'll look at it from a biblical perspective. I'll look at it, of course, from a political perspective as well. And I'm super excited about that, but I need a couple of days to keep preparing it. And so we'll talk about that. We'll also talk about a speech that was made by Tamika Mallory at the Grammys, asking Joe Biden to not be an ally, but be an accomplice to, I guess, Black Lives Matter in their social justice movement or racial justice movement, I should say. That's a strange choice of words, considering an accomplice is typically someone that comes along and helps you with a crime and an ally. It's typically seen in a positive light. So we're going to dissect that speech. There's a lot, like I said, that I want to talk about this week, both within the church and the culture and politics. And we're going to get to all of it. If you've got any suggestions or anything specifically, you would

like me to talk about, please let me know. But I want a slow start. to the week this week. I want us to kind of focus on the things that I think that we need to be focused on, just kind of like how we ended Thursday. I want to go into the week, getting us in the right perspective if I can. So let's first talk about what I thought was an excellent article by Tim Keller in the Atlantic. Now, I know a lot of you, particularly on YouTube, it seems, you don't follow Tim Keller, you don't like Tim Keller, you don't agree with Tim Keller. I know there are a lot of you who are listening who do like Tim Keller. Maybe you're not aware that there has been some controversy within conservative evangelicalism surrounding him because he is more, I would say,

progressive on the social justice spectrum. He wrote a book called Generous Justice a few years ago where he made the argument that not giving to the poor is not just disobedience to God, because we are called to care for the least of these, but is actually robbing. the poor. So not giving your money to the poor is actually robbing the poor. And of course, he does use the Bible to support this. But there have been a lot of people who have analyzed, like, the origin of that thinking. And if he is suggesting that the government should be the vehicle to confiscate money or property from the so-called privilege group, give it to the other group, and the name of giving poor people what they're due. There has been a lot of pushback to that

and asking whether or not the origins of that kind of line of thinking are truly biblical or are they maybe coming from the Frankfurt School instead? And he has made a few comments over the years that seem to condone. And I would say explicitly condone something like collective grievance or collective repentance, collective reparations based on race. So not based on direct culpability, not based. on a direct crime or something that you directly did or did not say, but based on the color of your skin and the sins that your ancestors are the people that look like you may or may not

have committed. Obviously, we've talked about many times on this podcast why I don't think that is a correct biblical definition of justice at all. And so that is a very brief and a very general summary of why some people have had a hard time with Tim Keller. There are many other things as well. Some of his tweets seem to be missing a lot of context and a lot of a biblical substance to them. But also, he is a highly respected theologian. His work has helped so many millions of people, including myself, understand God better, understand the Bible better. I've probably read more books by Tim Keller than I have any other book that is, by one singular author.

So I have read probably since high school a dozen. I don't know, a dozen of his books. I think second is maybe Thomas Soul. Obviously, I love to read. But when I'm looking for books, I often look for books that are by an author that I haven't read before. But with Tim Keller, I have just consumed as many books of his

as I possibly can because they truly have been so helpful to me. When I was in high school, we read Reason for God together as a class when I was a senior. And that really helped change and hone my perspective of what it meant to understand who God is. It helped my apologetics. It helped my intellectual reasoning of Christianity, how to answer hard questions. Like, why do bad things happen? How can this good, all powerful God sit back seemingly while all of this evil occurs? He helped me. He helped me. answer those questions. He helped me wrestle with my faith, not just in high school, but throughout college, when I would doubt, when I would struggle, I would say God used Tim Keller's works

more than any other books besides the Bible. And so I'm very thankful. So I'm someone who really appreciates the good that he does bring to the table, and I appreciate the impact that he has had. while also obviously disagreeing with him on things like social justice versus biblical justice. And so if you are in the same camp as me, just understand that I think that we can pull really good things from what Tim Keller says and we can still disagree with him on other things. He has been so helpful to me in building my faith. And he continues to, he continues to an article like this. And then I'll get to another article where I feel like he is completely opposed to the things.

that I believe. So the article in the Atlantic is called Growing My Faith in the Face of Death. So Keller was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the beginning of 2020. He says in this article that he, you know, was frantically looking up statistics about how long he could possibly live. And he understands that this is a fatal condition, that it is not likely that he's going to recover. And so he is writing now on reflections of death. And he talks about that throughout his long ministry, he has, that he has written about death, that he has preached on death, that he has encouraged other people in the face of death, but that it's very different. To talk about death as a theory, talk about death in the abstract versus actually experiencing it for ourselves. And he talks about

something that I think that we can all relate to, that we all understand that death is inevitable. Death and taxes are the two necessary evils in life as the saying goes. And yet it's really hard for us to grapple with it. It's hard for us, especially to grapple with our own mortality and just how temporal we are. We're created kind of with this sense of invincibility. Even if we have seen those around us get sick and grow frail and die, it's hard for us to believe that the same thing could possibly happen to us. And I think part of that is because God wrote eternity on the human heart, as the Bible tells us. And so we do have a desire and knowledge. that we are going to live forever, of course, not how we are now, but we understand that we have

souls that will live eternally. And of course, we, you know, we could get into the resurrection of the bodies and all of that, but we won't right now. And so I think this longing for eternity, this feeling of invincibility that all of us have, is actually an indication of something that God put inside of our hearts. It's actually a symbol or a signifier of us, being made in the image of the eternal God. And that's something that Keller talks about here, that that is part of what makes death so hard to grapple with, especially for ourselves, even when we're facing it. And he talks about how he even started to grow kind of better and scared and resentful because he had planned the rest of his life. He had no reason to think that

he wasn't going to live for a long time. And I think that's true of all of us, no matter what age we're in. It's something that I've thought about that is so interesting about death is that the theory of evolution says that the reason we evolve is, you know, based on need. Evolutionists would even say that the reason we have religion, the reason we have faith is because in the past it helped our ancestors in some way or another communities, tribes, needed this. And so that's why they kind of developed this idea of God or like the God of the Gaps theory, the idea that a long time ago people couldn't understand what the sun was. They couldn't

understand how the universe worked. And so they used this idea of a God or gods to try to explain away these gaps in understanding that they have. But of course, evolutionists say as knowledge has progressed, as science has progressed, we have a less and less need for God. That's the theory that materialists, that secular humanists would put forth as to why people forever have sought after God, why people have always asked these existential questions of why am I here who made me? Is there something beyond? Is there something bigger than me? What happens when I die? But you would think after all of this time, after all of this supposed evolution, that we would be used to the thing that every single person that lived before us had experienced either either

themselves, well, they did experience it themselves, but they also experienced it probably in seeing other people. And that is death. Why aren't we used to death yet? Like, why isn't it something that we have accepted? Like if our minds are evolving, if human understanding is evolving, if our need for grasping for eternity or something bigger than us or something transcendent is getting smaller and smaller because human understanding is getting bigger than bigger, why haven't we understood death yet? I mean, that is one of the things that has stuck with us since the beginning of time. Why, when someone dies or when we're faced with death, why does it feel like it's not supposed to be this way? Why is it so shocking to us? Why is it so difficult for us to face our own

finiteness when all of history tells us that every single human being is finite? Why are we deluded with this sense of invincibility or this sense of eternality that we have in our hearts when we know that everything is going to end. Everyone around us is going to end. Why is this so hard for us to grapple with? And I would say it's because we're not products of evolution. God isn't getting smaller or our need for God is not getting smaller as human understanding gets bigger. As science progresses even more, the reason why we feel that it should not be this way. The reason why we still feel shocked by death, why we still mourn death so much, why it hits us like a ton of bricks when it happens to someone in our lives or when we are faced with it ourselves is because

it's not supposed to be this way. It's not. Like, we still have, we still have that feeling that maybe it could be different. Like maybe it could be different one day. Like maybe one day. Like maybe one day we won't have to endure sorrow. Like maybe one day this thing that feels like robbing, this thing that feels like injustice really could go away. And that is what we get in Christ. That is something that God put into the human heart. It's not a product of evolution. It doesn't really make any sense for it to be. But it is a product of God creating us and placing in us a longing for eternity, a longing for restoration, a longing for redemption, a longing for heaven, a longing for glory, a longing for a time where we don't have to fear loss, we don't have to fear pain,

we don't have to fear sorrow and sadness. And that is what Tim Keller talks about, that he's no longer thinking about those things in the sense of trying to write a book or encourage a congregant or prepare a sermon, but he is realizing that is what he calls a person. personal reality. And he talks about why it's so hard for us, in particular, in the West and the luxurious United States to deal with this. And he makes an interesting point. He says, why is it that people in prosperous modern society seem to struggle so much with the existence of evil suffering and death? In his book, a secular age, the philosopher Charles Taylor wrote that

while humans have always struggled with the ways and justice of God, until quite recently, no one had concluded that suffering made the existence of God implausible. For millennia, people held a strong belief in their own inadequacy or sinfulness and did not hold the modern assumption that we all deserve a comfortable life. Moreover, Taylor has argued we have become so confident in our powers of logic that if we cannot imagine any good reason that suffering exists, we assume there can't be one. And I think that's absolutely true, that it's not just that all human beings, like I said, struggle with this concept of death because I think that everyone does and everyone is troubled by it. Everyone's disturbed by it. Everyone is saddened by it. But for us in the West,

the existence of death isn't just something that's difficult for us and something that we try to wrestle with God about, but something that actually makes us doubt God's existence and not just death, but also pain, also trials, also suffering, despite what we see in the Bible, that suffering comes part and parcel with a human life. It especially is part of the Christian life. And yet when it happens, we find ourselves saying, why? Why me? Well, how could a good God let this happen? A good God would never let this happen. A good God would never let coronavirus happen. A good God would never let these government shutdowns happen. A good God would never let government corruption happen. A good God would never let all of the famine and the sorrow and the injustice that we

see in the world happen. He would never let that happen. And it's because we have come, I think, to idolize comfort and happiness so much. It reminds me so much of brave new world. We have come to expect and think that we are entitled to stability and ease and smooth sailing that when there comes a storm that knocks us off our path or when there comes a bump in the road that we think that we have been robbed of something that we deserve, which is comfort, which is ease, which is, for whatever reason, living forever. And so he talks about how, especially here in the United States, especially here in the West, when we have so much, when we do have long life expectancies, when we have so many resources at our disposal, that understanding that suffering is a part of life

and doesn't disprove God just because we don't understand it is even more important and even more difficult for us than it is probably for other people in other parts of the world who are so used to suffering. I mean, Christians in the Middle East, Christians in China are so used to suffering. I think they would laugh at the idea that suffering somehow negates the existence of God. But we in America have a very hard time with this. He says, he talks about how he had to realize this himself. He had to grapple with this himself. And he asked himself, had his understanding of death been shaped by his culture. He said, had I been slipping unconsciously into the supposition that God lived for me rather than I for him, that life should go well for me, that I knew

better than God does how things should go? The answer was yes, to some degree. I found that to embrace God's greatness, to say thy will be done was painful at first and then perhaps counterintuitively profoundly liberating. To assume that God is as small and as finite as we are may feel freeing, but it offers no remedy for anger. He gives this metaphor in reason for God that has always stuck with me. When human beings are asking, how could a good God allow death and suffering happen to people? How could he allow all of these bad things to allow, or how could he allow all of these bad things to happen? He gives a metaphor of, for example, if a doctor or if a parent takes a child to a doctor to get their vaccines.

I'm not having a vaccine conversation right now, so just cool your jets. But this is a metaphor, takes a child to the doctor for his shots. That child, who may be four years old, has no idea why he is getting shots. And it wouldn't help if the doctor explained or if the mother explained scientifically why these shots are necessary, like what the disease is, how the shot is going to work. Really, the most that the mom can say to her child is, look, this is going to hurt, but it's going to be okay. I'm going to be here with you. I'm not going to leave you. I'm going to comfort you. And it's going to be fine. But this is something that is necessary. This is something that is for your good. This is something that is going to benefit you in the long run. And even that,

the child is not going to be able to fully understand. The only thing that the child understands in the moment is that it's going to hurt and that he doesn't want this to happen. He might even be mad at his mom. He might be mad at the doctor. He doesn't understand immunity. He doesn't understand the disease. He doesn't understand the threat. He can't see, you know, 10 years down the line when maybe his immune system is confronted with this disease, but he has already built an immune response to it. He's not even going to understand that that's happening when it happens. And yet, and yet the parent doesn't try to explain all of that to the child because she understands that he doesn't have the mental capacity to be able to get it yet. And so if that is the gap in understanding between two finite

beings between the mom and the child and trying to explain something like the efficacy or the importance of a vaccine, think about the gap and understanding. between an infinite being God and human beings who are finite. If he tried to explain to us why all the pain and all the suffering and all the trials that we're going through right now are worth it. So when we ask God, why is this happening? There would be nothing that he could say that we would understand that would make it better. All he can really say in that moment is that, look, it is going to be worth it.

You have to trust me. I am going to hold you through this. I am going to comfort you through this. And you have to rely on my faithfulness, on my sovereignty, not what you see right in front of you. That's really all God can tell us is remind us of who he is, that he is in control, and that everything that we're going through right now is temporary and that it will be worth it. Suffering, death, pain, anguish, despair is not a reason to disbelieve in God just because we want to believe that God should come down to our level and explain things in a way that we can't understand. We can't. That's one thing that we have to realize that we are so small, that we are so finite, that we are so frail and fallible, that there's

nothing that God could explain to us that would make sense of the sorrow and the sadness and the suffering that we are going through now. And that really is where the faith comes in. and that's exactly why Tim Keller wrote this article. He says, Kathy and I, his wife, have discovered that the less we attempt to make this world into heaven, the more we are able to enjoy it. No longer are we burdening it with demands impossible for it to fulfill. We have found that the simplest things from sun on the water and flowers in the vase to our own embraces, sex and conversation bring more joy than ever.

This has taken us by surprise. I can sincerely say without any sentimentality or exaggeration that I've never been happier in my life and that I've never had more days filled with comfort. So he talks about reconciling with the reality of the limited time that he has with his limitations, that that is what is allowing him to enjoy the present moment without demanding from it things that it just can't possibly give. And I think that the sooner all of us learned that lesson. I mean, we might have 70 years left here on earth. And I pray to God that we do, that we have lives that are full, that glorify him, that are

obedient to him, that we get to see our grandkids and our great grandkids, and that we hopefully write this stupid path that America seems to be on right now. But I think that the sooner that we realize that the world was not meant for our comfort, that life. was not meant for ease, that we were not created just to coast, that we were not created for convenience, that we were not created just to sit by and to allow things to be easy and to go as planned, that we were made for hard things, like we were made for difficulty, we were made for sorrow, like we were in a sense that we were made to be able to deal with it. We were made to go through really hard things. And that one day we won't go through hard things anymore. That the

hope and the comfort and the convenience that we are trying and failing to find in this life, in this world, are guaranteed for us in Christ. That is the exchange that he made when he died on the cross and rose again and said, by grace through faith, you can find life in me. Now, without Christ, we are destined for more suffering, for more wrath, for more discomfort and more sorrow than we could even imagine. But because God loves us so much, he made a way, for us to not just be forgiven from our sins here, not just have joy here in the midst of trials and sorrow, but also to get rid of sorrow forevermore. And the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because I know a lot of you are going through a lot of hard things right now. Like you message me

and you tell me the difficult things that you're going through, whether you lost a job, whether your child was suicidal this past year, whether you are struggling because a loved one died of COVID, or whether you're going through some other kind of personal situation. A lot of you are going through really hard things. You were diagnosed with something. Your husband was diagnosed with something. Your parents were diagnosed with something. You were blindsided this past year.

And you have found yourself asking these questions of why God? And does God really love me? Does God really care about me? And you have looked to the lives of other people and have felt like they have the life that you deserve, that things are going easier for them, that they never have to struggle, that they're not going through the same trials. And you wonder if your faith is in something that is real. And I think that this article did such a good job of reminding us of why our understanding,

our small understanding of what life should be is a poor lens through which to view God and his sovereignty and his faithfulness. And once we let go of the expectation of this life being perfect, the expectation of the people around us and of ourselves being invincible, then we can enjoy every moment that God graciously gives us. Because remember, he suspends all of time, like everything that is moving, everything that is breathing, everything that is ticking, everything that is advancing forward by the powerful omnipotent hand of God. There is nothing that happens outside of his will. And I understand that some of you, you don't like that because it sounds like it makes you uncomfortable to think that

a sovereign God is also somehow purposing bad things to happen. But I will remind you there's a difference between sovereign will and moral will. Nothing happens outside of God's sovereign will, as Matthew 10 says, not even a sparrow falls from the sky apart from the will of our father. And yet there are things that happen every second that go against his moral will, meaning that people sin. And that's not something that he wants them to do. And yet, everything is under his sovereign will. As R.C. Sprole says, there is not even a maverick molecule in all of creation.

There is nothing that is outside of God's control and out of God's hand. And if we can live in confidence of that, that changes how we view politics. Like that changes how we view justice. That changes how we view culture. That changes how we view our own lives. That changes how we view every moment, every day that we wake up, realizing that it is a gift that God, the sovereign God has given us to live according to his glory. And we are free to be happy in this moment, knowing that there is nothing that we deserve

out of this second. There's nothing that we deserve out of this day. There's nothing that we are entitled to, and there's nothing good that we should expect. The only good that we receive is from God as a gracious gift. And I think once we realize that, it frees us, it liberates us to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be satisfied in the moment that we are given. And that is what I got out of that Atlantic article. And it was very encouraging to me.

It's morose. It's sad. Obviously, I'm very sad for Tim Keller. sad for his wife. Even Jesus wept over Lazarus's death. And so it's normal for us to be sad. It's okay for us to be sad about it. But also, we get to enjoy fully every moment that God has given us here on earth without doubting for a second, his goodness and his sovereignty. That's the grace he's given to us by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and the accounts in his word. All right. So I wanted to start the week with that kind of encouragement. And actually, let me read you, let me read you this.

passage from the Bible. And then I'll get into some of my disagreements with Tim Keller. Okay, let me read this passage. First Corinthians 1550 through 56. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in

victory. Oh, death. Where is your victory? Oh, death. Where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. And the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Monday we talked about Instavangelists, people like Glennon Doyle, people like Bray Brown, how they're offering a lot of emotional supports, Gin Hatmaker, they make us feel good about ourselves. And yet they're not answering these questions. One of the questions that they're not answering is what is true justice? Another one is, why am I here? What's my purpose? Is there anything beyond my own happiness? Is there anything bigger than myself that I should care about? Another question that they don't answer is what happens when we die. What's going to happen with death? Like, who is going to

defeat evil? Is this always going to be this hard? Are we always going to be enduring this kind of sadness? Jesus Christ alone answers that question. He is the only one who can answer who we are, why we're here, what our purpose is, how long we last. And he has an answer for what's going to happen to death, what's going to happen to evil, what's going to happen to wickedness and corruption and sorrow. he's going to defeat all of it. And so that's the hope and that's the joy that we have. And so even in a kind of sad article like this, like there's so much joy in reminding us of where our hope comes from. All right. Let's transition to the second half of this episode where I talk about some other kind of cultural and political differences that I have, but I'll try to end it still positively.

All right. So you guys know I'm so thankful for all the good that Tim Keller has. has offered us and even just that profound perspective that he gave us in his article in the Atlantic. Now, I mentioned to you at the top of it that I also disagree with him about politics. And maybe it's because he's metropolitan. He led a church in New York for a long time. And so he just kind of has those leftist social justice proclivities when it comes to some things. Now, he does say that he denounces Marxism. I'm not sure.

I know that he is a registered Democrat, but I'm not sure that he would consider himself a leftist. I want to be as charitable and as honest as possible. Like I don't want to cast him as some communist when I don't think that's what he is. But I do think that probably his progressivism when it comes to especially economic issues colors how he how he sees politics and colors how he sees things like justice and what is actually owed and charity and taxes and all of that stuff. I honestly am not totally sure where he stands on abortion as far as legislation goes. but he has been one of these voices that has said, you know,

one of the biggest problems that we're seeing in Christianity right now is Christian nationalism. And I've talked about this. Beth Moore said the same thing. There are other evangelical leaders that I think a lot of people would consider conservative evangelical leaders who believe that Christian nationalism is the biggest threat to the church that we have. And I'll remind you of what I think about that after I read some quotes from this article in the Christian Post. Christian nationalism works on fear and resentment.

Nietzsche said there is no truth. You cannot appeal to truth. What you appeal to is fear and resentment. And that's how you get power. And that's how you win, which is an interesting quote from him, considering that he obviously doesn't agree with Nietzsche there. Keller said that while he agrees with the Christian right on policies like abortion and same-sex marriage, but asserted that the way many Christians handled hot button issues in the 80s and 90s simply fueled fear, resentment, and anger in their communities. You know how they raised money for 20 years. They sent out letters talking about how you've got to send this money because the gay people are going to try to come and take your children away because they're evil and because the Democrats in the left are going to destroy your religious liberty. They just said awful things and vilified people.

It's one of the reasons why so many gay activists now just don't want to forgive evangelicals because when they had a little power in the 80s and 90s, that's how. they raised their money. He goes on to say about Christian nationalism. Evangelicals nurtured Christian nationalism. Christian nationalists use that fear and resentment. We brought it on ourselves. And he said in churches across the U.S., many members are falling into one of two camps. Keller said, on one hand, many young evangelicals, particularly those living in cities, almost have a tendency to be overwoke and take their cues from the secular world talking about nationalists in nasty ways. It is dangerous, but it's also one of the ways that you fuel the extremism is by treating the extremists as sort of subhuman. And so he goes on to say that some

pastors are saying that some people are leaving their churches because they don't talk about justice and about how bad Trump is or how bad Christian national is and nationalism is, and because these pastors are not preaching about it. So here's what I think about all of that. I think that there are very few actual Christian nationalists in the evangelical church. Unfortunately, Christian nationalism has been used as a boogeyman in the same way that Marxist or Marxism kind of has been used as a boogeyman. But here's what I'll say. And I understand that because I'm on the conservative side of this, that you might see me as biased in this way.

but Marxism is actually much more of a legitimate threat to the evangelical church than Christian nationalism is. And I think we have to define our terms here. So Christian nationalism is so rarely defined by the people who use it when Beth Moore, for example, said that our biggest threat is Christian nationalism in the church and it has to do with Trumpism. I asked her on Twitter, hey, can you define? Like, what do you mean by this? Like, what is Christian nationalism? And she didn't respond to me. She's not obligated to respond to me, but also I think clarity. and defining our terms is really important. And so when you're saying Christian nationalist,

are you just saying all conservative Christians? Are you just saying anyone who is patriotic, anyone who loves our country, anyone who believes in religious liberty, anyone who believes that, for example, that God is the great moral lawgiver and therefore what he says is good and right and true should be directive for how we should formulate our laws?

Is that Christian nationalism? So has every person who has believed, in God is the great moral lawgiver. Have they all been Christian nationalist? And what do you mean by Nationalist, by the way? When some people say nationalist, they immediately say, well, that means Nazi. That means some form of bigotry. It's wrong to care about your country more than other people. Well, let me break that down for a second. Nationalist obviously can be very ugly. It obviously has had very ugly manifestations throughout history. It can be associated with fascism. But, I mean, obviously so can socialism. Obviously, communism has also wrought terrible evils and has been responsible for the deaths of

tens of millions of people throughout history. And it's still in vogue in America today. Nationalism, though, isn't always associated with some form of collectivism or some form of totalitarianism or some form of evil. It depends on how you define nationalism, which is why I think it's so important to do. If nationalism is simply saying we prioritize the needs of our citizens and we prioritize the needs of our country before we prioritize the needs of other countries, and that means that we're going to have secure borders, that means that we are going to promote policies that are best for our country and our people and our workers, not best for China, not best for countries in the Middle East, not best for Sweden, not best for Australia,

but whatever is best for the United States, that's what we are going to promote. And that's what we are going to try to enact. That could be a form of nationalism. You can say that nationalism is saying that we have the best country in the world or that we're patriotic or whatever. None of these things necessarily equate to any form of fascism or any form of bigotry. When people say that it's wrong to think that America is the greatest country in the world or it's wrong to say we're going to put the needs of Americans above the needs of other people, there are Christians that I've seen say that that is wrong, that that's a form of bigotry, that that's a form of white privilege, that that's a form of white supremacy.

Would you say that about any other country? Like if the leader of Zimbabwe, and unfortunately the leader of Simbawi doesn't say this because he's corrupt, but if the leader of Zimbabwe said, hey, I'm going to put the needs of my people above the needs of the American people. I'm going to put the needs and the desires of my people above the needs of the people of Norway or above the needs of the people of African people. Stan, would you really fault him for that? Would you, would you fault the leader of Kenya or the leader of India for saying, you know what, we're going to look after our people first? We're going to prioritize

the needs of our citizens first. Would you say that that was wrong? Would you honestly demand that the leader of Zimbabwe say, you know what? No, you have to care just as much about the needs of Americans or Canadians as you do, the needs of Zimbabwe. And of course you wouldn't. That would be ridiculous. And so if that's, that's true about countries in Africa or countries in any other kind of the world, that you allow them to prioritize their own citizens. Why is that off the table for Americans? Like, why is it wrong when America does it? I'm afraid it's because of this idea that the West, because the West has done so well, and because the West is so successful in so many ways, that we're not allowed to put the

priorities of our countries first, that other countries are able to do that, but we're not able to to do that. When we do it, it's some kind of form of bigotry. And think about it in a different way. If the mayor of Tulsa said, look, I'm going to put the needs of people who live in Tulsa, I don't know what you're called Tolson's. I'm going to put the people of this city first. And I'm not going to care as much about the people of St. Louis or the people of Albany, as much as I care about the people of Tulsa. I can't care about everyone who lives in every other city. Would you say that's wrong if that mayor said, look, I think Tulsa is the greatest city in the world. And I'm going to put the needs of the people who live in Tulsa before the needs of people who live in Dallas.

You would say, no, that's a really good mayor. Like you want a mayor who is going to put the needs of the people who live in his jurisdiction first. You don't want a mayor who says, you know what? I honestly, I honestly care about Sacramento just as much as I care about Tulsa. So we're going to have to weigh. We're going to have to weigh with the people of Sacramento want, with what. what the people in my jurisdiction want. You would say that's terrible.

That's horrible leadership. And so if that's true, if it's okay for the mayor of Atlanta to care about Atlanta the most, if it's okay for the mayor of Atlanta, for example, to say Atlanta is the greatest city in the world, if that's not bigoted, then it's not bigoted for the leaders of a particular country, especially America, since we are in America. It's not bigoted. It's not wrong to say, look, we're going to put the needs, the priorities of our people first. and we think that America was founded on the best ideas and ideals in the world.

And we think that we've got the greatest people and we want to make America strong. That is traditionally what people are thinking when they call themselves nationalists or when they think about nationalists. They're talking about the sovereignty of their country, the strength of their borders, prioritizing the needs of their country. And look, a strong America means a strong world. A weak America means a strong China. And that is bad for the rest of the world. It's bad when you have an officially atheist, communist, oppressive regime that is the world's superpower.

And there will always be a world superpower. So a weak America is really bad for the world. A strong China is really bad for the world. A strong Russia, a strong Iran is really bad for the world. A strong America is really good for the world. And so I just want to take a step back and define that term. Like, what do you mean by nationalists? And then when you combine it with this term Christian nationalist, what is actually meant by that?

Like, are you just talking about the people who stormed the Capitol? Obviously, we're on the same page that was wrong and that was egregious. Are you talking about, what are you talking about? Are you talking about people who use Christianity to try to justify their, like, political opinions? I think it's important for us to know what you mean by Christian nationalism. If you're just talking about being a Christian who believes that the God of the universe, who invented right and wrong and invented good and bad should be the general inspiration for what our laws are

because all laws speak to a worldview. All laws speak to a value system, a belief system. All laws speak to some kind of belief in some kind of bigger power. All laws speak to some kind of religion, whether it's the secular progressive religion or the Judeo-Christian worldview, all laws speak to some kind of morality and some kind of, of moral view. So is that Christian nationalism? Is it just being patriotic? Or is it this kind of, what I agree is toxic, this kind of idea that America is modern day Israel, that we are God's chosen people,

and that everything that happens, every eternal like prophecy is hinged on what happens here in America. If that is what you're talking about, then of course I agree that America is not modern day Israel, that America is not the city on the hill. America is not God's chosen people, that the church is God's chosen people, that Christians are, of course, universally God's chosen people, the city on the hill. I agree with you on that. But I think we have to be really specific. And if it's that, like if we agree that the toxicity of that, Christian nationalism, which is a false teaching, that America is modern day Israel and all the prophecies in the Bible have to be fulfilled in America and that eschatology, the end times is dependent on what happens in America.

If that's the case, I think that is a small sliver of people. I just don't think that that is all that influential. And I don't think it's as big of a threat as people like Tim Keller and Beth Moore say that it is compared to progressivism. I mean, it's just not like how many Christian nationalist influencers do you know? And again, I think most people who use that term have no idea what they're even saying. But man, how much and how fast have you seen progressivism, have you seen critical race theory, which, man, we've defined a thousand times, and I'm not going to take the time to do it right now. I'll link to past episodes if you want to hear a thorough definition of that. Like, how fast have you seen the church grow soft on sin and take examples of

secular social justice and try to apply it to what should be biblical justice? Like, how much have you've seen the church crumble and weakened because we look and sound more like the world than we do Christians than we do the Bible. Like how much have we taken the Bible out of context, ripped the Bible apart, deconstructed our faith in the name of worshiping progressivism? We've seen that a lot. I mean, think about all of the cultural institutions that progressivism has taken, has taken over. I mean, we've got big tack, we've got major corporations, we've got most of the mainstream media. We've now got most of the federal government.

We've got a lot of the intelligence community. We've got some of the military, as you guys probably saw with the back and forth, between the military and Tucker Carlson. We've got most of public education. We've got most of academia. I mean, most of our huge institutions, did I already say BigTAC and the major corporations like Amazon? All of those huge institutions with all of this power.

They're all progressive. They're all on the same page. They all hate conservative Christianity. They all hate conservatives in general. They all hate any kind of dissent. And they are wetting that power in an onslaught against what half of the country thinks and believes and loves and holds dear. And I think it is an absolute farce. It's an absolute lie. Or it's just a delusion to think that the biggest threat could be this sliver of Christian nationalists who like where is their power? Like where's their institutional backing? Where do you see this happening? How do you see this see peeping in when clearly so many of the powers that be and so much of what we're seeing manifest itself in the church in the way of false teaching? Not all, not all, but so much of what we see is coming from progressivism. It's coming from a total redefinition of what justice looks like, of what gender looks like, of what sexuality looks like, what sin looks like, who Jesus is, who God is, what the end times are going to look like, what heaven is, what the new heavens and the new

earth are going to look like. It's all being replaced by a new worldview, which is critical theory, whether people understand what critical theory is or not. That's not to say that that form of Christian nationalism that worships Donald Trump or worships America or sees America is something that it's not, isn't bad and toxic and wrong in that we shouldn't talk about but I think that we need to be really clear about like where the real threats are coming from and we need to understand what they are. And I agree with him. We should not dehumanize people on either side. Like we should be able to unite in the gospel and to call out false teachings equally. But I also think we need to be really realistic about what the threat is. And let me end

really quickly because I know we're running out of time on a particular example of this. So the Christian Post reported on this. I originally saw it from Christopher Rufo, who is been on this podcast a couple times, that California Ethnic Studies Proposal teaches kids white Christians are evil. They chant to Aztec gods. The article says the California Department of Education is set to vote on a new ethnic studies curriculum aimed at the decolonization of American society and includes lessons teaching students to chant to Aztec Gods. If approved, what is being called the Ethnic Studies Model curriculum will be implemented statewide in the Golden States primary and secondary public schools, which serve approximately six million

students in some 10,000 schools, according to investigative journalist Christopher Rufo, who wrote about the study or wrote about the issue in City Journal. White Christians are guilty of theeaside against indigenous tribes, the killing of their deities, and replacing them with a Christian faith. This particular teacher argues in a chart, white settlers thus established a regime of colonialism. That's a new one. Dehumanization and genocide.

And the ultimate goal, according to Kauten, I don't know how to pronounce this guy's last name, the guy who started this curriculum wants to teach this curriculum, is to engineer a, quote, counter genocide against white people. The lessons also include an official ethnic study community chant, and it's recommended that teachers lead students in indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the inlaq-ac affirmation, which is a direct appeal to Aztec gods. and they worship that particular God through human sacrifices and cannibalism. And apparently these students are going to learn that that is all well and good.

And again, that this is a counter genocide against whites, in particular white Christians. I know that this seems extreme. And I'm not saying that this is going to be like in a school near you tomorrow. And this is just one example. And of course, California is crazy. But what we see in California we typically see in the rest of the world. and I'm telling you, like, this is the natural conclusion to critical theory and critical race theory. Like, this is the natural conclusion to a worldview that categorizes people as oppressed versus oppressor based on their skin color.

On the intersectionality scale, the people with the least amount of oppression points and the most amount of oppressor points, according to that worldview, are white Christians. And so, social justice says there has to be a way of retribution, not just restitution, There has to be a way of revenge in order to create so-called equity, so everyone ends up being the same. So it's trying to write historic injustices with modern injustices like a so-called counter-genocide. I mean, we're talking about elementary schools and middle schools being infiltrated in this stuff. And you guys have probably seen progressive influencers on TikTok on Instagram talk about decolonizing and deconstructing your Christianity so it will no longer be offensive to people like this. And part of that deconstruction is always refusing to believe, John 14, 6, that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the father except through him.

This is now seen as white supremacy. The belief in the inerrant Word of God is now seen as white supremacy, the belief that Jesus is the only way, of course, is seen as somehow white supremacist. And the belief in traditional Christianity, traditional sexuality, traditional marriage, all of that always falls away in the process of so-called deconstruction and the decolonization that is being pushed here. And I've seen Daryl Harrison, who I've had on this podcast, talk about the rise of nativism among Christians and trying to say that we need to get back to the kind of mysticism and the paganism that we saw in early Native Americans before the settlers came. And we really need to decolonize in the sense that we need to get back to what's

Africans believed before Christianity came about in that Christianity in the form that we see today is just the white man's religion and decolonizing it basically means undoing all of it, deconstructing it basically means taking everything away that is culturally unpopular and inconvenient to believe and replacing it with some of the stuff that we're seeing in this kind of curriculum. This is being institutionalized. And so I always tell you guys, you should be in the fears that you occupy pushing Christian values just as hard as these secular humanists are pushing their worldview. Nothing is neutral. Nothing is neutral. There is no such thing as a neutral curriculum. There's no such thing as a neutral education that your child is getting at public school.

These people on the left believe that you're a Christian nationalist if you try to influence the spheres that you occupy with Christianity, but there's no problem with their. with them pushing their faith of secular humanism and progressivism and counter genocide, because that's all fine. But you pushing yours is deeply problematic. I know, like I said, I'm a conservative, so I'm biased. I think this is a much bigger threat, what we are seeing. This form of progressivism and Marxism, I think it's a much bigger threat to the country.

It's a much bigger threat to the church because it's not popular to be a Christian nationalist in the sense that you're like, actual toxic form that we talked about. That's not like no one's getting platformed because of that. No one's getting paid because of that. Like no one is becoming more popular or more accepted by the world because they believe that America is modern day Israel and that Trump is the Messiah of the West. Like that's not popular. But what is popular is letting go of every Orthodox tenet of the Christian faith in the name of the name of the West. decolonization and acceptance and tolerance to the point to where you think that somehow equalizing

the wrongs of the past is by hurting and wiping out people who you think represent those wrongs today. I think that's a much bigger threat. And I think that we need to be honest and serious about what actually we are facing. Now, I told you that I was going to end positively. This has kind of been like a wide-ranging episode, but it's all been kind of centered on the things that Tim Keller have said recently. There's a lot of craziness that's going on in the world. There's a lot of craziness that's going on in the church that's going on in your kids' school. And it's really easy to despair. But I want to bring us back to what I said in the beginning. That look, God's going to take care of everything that we are facing today. Like there's one day not going to be

any confusion. There's one day not going to be any struggle. There's not going to be any politics. there's not going to be any terrible, this terrible kind of curriculum that we're seeing in schools. There's not going to be this kind of indoctrination. There's not going to be left versus right. There's not going to be partisan politics. There's not going to be hate. There's not going to be tension. There's not going to be fear.

There's not going to be sorrow. There's not going to be death. There's not going to be all of these things that we talk about on a daily basis that scare the heck out of us. There's not going to be any of that. And Tim Keller, now that he is facing death, everything kind of comes into. perspective. It's interesting how both birth and death tend to do that. When you have your first child, they lay that child on your chest, everything comes into perspective. You realize the things that are

important and not important. And the same thing happens. I think that when you're facing the death of a loved one or facing your own imminent death, everything comes into perspective. And you're again reminded of what's important and what is not. I do believe that the things that are happening within the church within culture are important to push back upon is much as kindly as kindly as, as strongly as as righteously, as biblically as we possibly can, will also keep in mind that we can be joyful, we can be happy, we can be hopeful, and all of that, knowing that ultimately God is in control, he's going to take care of all of it. Our job is to influence as much as we can with the Christian life, the tiny spheres

that we occupy in the tiny blip of eternity that constitute our lives while we're here. here. All right. That's all I've got for today. I will be back here tomorrow.