Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 996 | How Feminism Misunderstands Gender | Guest: Gabriel Finochio

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Today, we're joined by Gabriel Finochio, cofounder of TheosU and host of "The Reactionary Christian," to discuss Christian nationalism, the church fathers, the attack of the secular Left, the importance of a Christian society, and why feminism has destroyed biblical womanhood for so many women. Is America a Christian country, and how should religion be structured into government, if at all? What actually IS "Christian nationalism"? What elements of our civilization should be conserved? What is the real danger of idolatry? And is feminism gender dysphoria? --- Timecodes: (03:15) Defining Gabe’s theology (08:59) Christian nationalism (15:15) Christian virtues (28:59) Religion vs. relationship (47:55) The problems with feminism (01:04:15) Body dysphoria (01:09:20) Destruction of families --- Today's Sponsors: Focus on the Family — the new podcast, "Practice Makes Parent" brings you real, practical, and biblical advice. Tune in every Wednesday on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting platform. Find the podcast here: https://podcasts.focusonthefamily.com/show/practice-makes-parent/?refcd=1674101&utm_source=blaze&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=relatable America’s Christian Credit Union – nationwide personal and business banking for people who still love God and country. ACCU is federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration. Learn more and get started at AmericasChristianCU.com/SWITCH Hillsdale College— Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses on the works of C.S. Lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College’s online courses, all available for FREE. Go to https://hillsdale.edu/relatable to enroll. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 430 | Is 'Christian Nationalism' a Threat to Evangelicalism? | Guest: Nathan Finochio https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000523771597 Ep 793 | An Atheist & a Christian Define Christian Nationalism | Guest: James Lindsay https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-793-an-atheist-a-christian-define/id1359249098?i=1000610457446 Ep 949 | What 'He Gets Us' Gets Wrong https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000645089893 Ep 753 | "He Gets Us': The Good, the Bad, & the Unbiblical https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000599425881 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Christian nationalism, the origins of feminism, and much, much more will be discussed on this highly controversial episode of Relatable with Gabe Finocchio. He is the founder of Theos You, an online seminary. He is also the host of a podcast called The Reactionary Christian, and he's got some very interesting and nuanced. And yes, as I said, some controversial takes on some of the hottest topics of our day. And he will be fleshing out all of those. And, much more on today's episode of Relatable, which is brought to you by our friends at GoodRanchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use Code Alley. Check out that's good ranchers.com code Alley. Gabe, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me on. Yeah. A pleasure and a privilege. Well, for those who may not know, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Geez, where do I begin? Well, my name is Gabriel Finocchio, and I started an online theology Netflix-style company where we teach theology in bite-sized formats. It's called TheoCU. And from there, I've done a couple other things. I started a woke Jesus meme page. And then I moved on and started a podcast called.

called the reactionary Christian. A lot of, you know, my friends were like, Gabe, you have to start a podcast. And I didn't know, you know, what I was going to call it or what it would be about. But I consider myself to be a reactionary. And I've always kind of been that way. And so it just kind of fits like a glove. And so yeah, so that's the latest. Yes.

And you know, I just, I love following you. And I've loved following you and your brother. And I've had your brother on several years ago. But I have loved following y'all for so long. I mean, some of just the most articulate and not just articulate, but interesting people. And you and your brother, Nathan, are different in a lot of ways, I think, biologically and personality-wise, not that I know y'all super well, but just even your Instagram personalities are kind of different.

Would you call yourself more conservative than Nathan in some ways? Yeah, I mean, we are very different. maybe like a ying and a yang. Yeah. Maybe like good versus evil. No. He's my arch nemesis. He's my,

he's a wonderful guy. I love Nathan so much. But yeah, you know, Nathan and I, I think we generally share the same convictions. But yeah, I would probably be to the right of my brother.

You know, I might even be to the right. of, you know, people on the right. So. Yeah. No, I think that you are. How would you describe yourself theologically? Like, okay, I would say I'm a reformed Baptist. How would you describe yourself? Wow. Yeah. Well, it's, that's an interesting question because I think I've arrived at a point where I'm not trying to just consider the last 500 years of Christian history. I'm trying to consider the last 2,000 years of Christian history.

Yeah. And, and so, you know, it's just I've, I've, I've, I've, I really have a love for the church fathers. And, and so I would, I always try to find, you know, go back to the kind of root system that we had in the early church. And I try to align my views with, uh, the views of the church fathers. And I don't believe that the church fathers were infallible. We know that the word of God is infallible. But I think the church fathers would have agreed with that,

but also, you know, just would have had a less, they would have had a less modern view of things. Because we are very, you know, I love how C.S. Lewis said, you know, we need to read old books because they help us to understand that we are living in a particular day and age, and they, they kind of breathe, you know, fresh air into our minds, and they, they help to expand our understanding. And I look at the church fathers that same way. So I would, I suppose, describe myself as a Christian who loves historic Christian Orthodoxy. Yeah. And so when you say that you're not really just looking at the past 500 years, of course, like since the Protestant Reformation, but you don't consider yourself Roman Catholic, but would you call yourself a Protestant?

I mean, obviously you're going before a Luther, but would you call yourself a Protestant? Yeah, I would call myself a Protestant because I am not a Roman Catholic. And I, yeah, I have some issues with the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah. And, and, and, but, you know, so do the Eastern Orthodox. Right. And the Eastern Orthodox wouldn't really call themselves Protestant. True. Right. But they would still object. Yeah. And so, and they would still protest, if you will. So I, I would just say that, you know, I try not to make my protest disproportionate. And I think that that's the issue. I think the, the issue is, you know, I kind of look at where. we're at right now as the in the scenario of the Lord of the Rings. And Mordor is on the march.

And our civilization is in decay. As Chesterton said, we're forgetting obvious things, like the fact that men are men and women are women. But there's, there's, there's, it's, it's not just decaying like a cheese. It is also being attacked by the orcs. and there's anti-Christianity that is attacking our Christian civilization. And so we have a decision to make. We can go back and forth about differences in our respective Christian denominations and, and, you know, churches, which is fine. I'm totally cool with having all those conversations and maintaining those distinctions. but if we are not careful and if we do it in a disproportionate way,

we're going to be doing it in a concentration camp eventually. And I just don't like I'm totally fine having the conversations and going deep into the differences of theology that we have as Christians. But I don't want to be doing it in a concentration camp. I'd rather be doing it in a Christian society. that identifies itself in the main as Christian with a sort of what I would call Christian pluralism, as opposed to what we have now, which is a secular pluralism. Yeah. And one thing that you talk about that I think is really interesting is this idea of

so-called Christian nationalism. And I say so-called just because there are so many different definitions of it. If you let the secularists define it, then they will say that it some kind of fascism where Christians take charge and they force everyone to bow before Jesus. If you talk to someone who would call themselves pro-Christian nationalism, they might just say, look, this was founded as a Christian nation and all morality and all laws have to come from somewhere. So it might as well be Christianity. There are different definitions of it. But I mean, what's your take on this whole Christian nationalism debate? is America a Christian country? And what should it look like if you're looking at the Constitution,

but also looking at an effort to make a society more Christian? Okay. Well, yeah, I've called myself a conservative Christian nationalist in the past. And I start with conservatism simply because I do believe that there are certain major things that must be conserved in order for life to exist. There, we, you know, we, there are, if you look around, like, you know, there's the moral order that needs to be conserved, right? There are chief issues of human doom that are being weighed in the balance in any civilization. So I suppose, you know, I'm wanting to conserve the main elements of our civilization.

But when I look at the main elements of our civilization, things to conserve, I look at it and I say, well, we have, you know, the main element of our civilization has been Christianity. And so I want to, as a conservative, I want to conserve Christianity because I think Christianity is the most important element of our civilization because it's given birth to our civilization. and without Christianity, we wouldn't have a civilization. We would be back in the first century. We would be back in the catacombs. We would be back in pagan times, genuine pagan times, where they worshiped Caesar. And all of their cultural customs, you know, they didn't celebrate Christmas Day. They didn't celebrate Easter.

They didn't even celebrate St. Valentine's Day. So, you know, again, our customs, our conventions, our Christian conventions, and even our psychology is Christian, you know, when we walk down the street and we see someone begging for money, we reach into our pockets. That's not a pagan custom. The pagans would have said, well, the gods have decided that he should be poor and I should be rich. But Christianity has changed all of that, even down to our psychology. And that's for, that goes for the atheists, too.

Their psychology is very Christian. Yeah. We have Christian atheists is what we have. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So our culture is very Christian. And so, again, I think the number one thing to conserve as a conservative is our religion because I believe that everything is a byproduct of religion. And that doesn't just go for our civilization.

That goes for every civilization that you study in human history. It starts with massive truth claims and then it, you know, those truth claims and convictions in the soul extend to the society and eventually trickle down and create and, you know, the civilizations that existed. So, so again, I want to conserve Christianity. And I want to conserve, I think it's a good idea to conserve our nations. I think it's a good idea for Americans to conserve America and for the French to conserve France and for the English to conserve England. And so I'm a nationalist because I think that nationalism was the tradition of the founding fathers. I think if we don't have nationalism, what we will have is internationalism.

And I look at internationalism as the, you know, we call it globalism, but it's internationalism. And it is the refusal to recognize nations as nations and as sovereign. And I think America is being attacked by globalist interests, cosmopolitan interests, people who are indifferent to the nation of America. and really all nations. And they want to destroy the identities of these nations and the rich heritage and histories of these nations. So the real danger that I'm trying to avoid is the danger of idolatry. Because, you see, if we don't worship God, we will fall into idolatry. Yeah. And I think pluralism is idolatry. I think pluralism, the allowance to worship any God and every God, you know, imaginable, the refusal to define who God is. That is idolatry. And the problem with idolatry on a practical level is that God punishes idolatry. And so, you know, people who fall into idolatry, nations who fall into idolatry, they become, they fall into immorality, which is the natural consequence of idolatry because a degraded God makes a degraded worshiper. But God avenges

these issues. And so I don't want God's punishment to fall upon America. But I know that God punishes idolatry and he punishes immorality, as we see in Romans chapter one. Yeah. So, you know, that's kind of it in a nutshell. And it just makes me think about the fact, like you said, Christian atheists, that the people who are trying to fundamentally change our country and who would like to forego this idea of Christian morality and entirety, they think that they will be able to conserve the Christian things they like in a godless nation. So they think that we can still have compassion. We can still have charity. We can still be against things like theft and murder.

if we no longer have the foundation that the Bible gives us for these things. They don't, of course, correlate this right to property with God's commandment against theft and against covetousness. But of course, that's actually where it comes from. And the founders knew that too. And so they think that they can remove the foundation and that the edifice won't fall down, but it will. You're never going to be able to preserve the vestiges of Christianity that you like in a pagan nation. And progressives don't realize that atheists that I've had on this podcast when I ask them, okay, you and I agree that murder is wrong or sometimes we might agree that like Marxism is wrong or all of these things.

And when I ask them why, but why? Why do you believe that's wrong? Where are you getting that idea that that is wrong and that this is right? And even the most clever atheists that I've had, they can't really tell me that. And they actually think it's the more sophisticated position to be like, well, it just is. and I am the rube over here that has to have God to determine my morality. When really it's the opposite, it is very absurd to say that something is wrong if no one has ultimately told you that it is. Yeah, excellent point. And I totally agree. The issue I find is that people are unaware of the fact of how Christian they are,

culturally, nationally, in a civilizational sense. And in that sense, I think Christian context. consciousness needs to rise. We need to reawaken ourselves to the fact that, you know, like, for example, they don't teach this in high school, but or probably even college, but the original 13 colonies enshrined Christianity into their state constitutions. And the first amendment was not an amendment to make America secular or create a secular pluralism. The first amendment was made so that the state constitutions could maintain their Christian identity and that the states themselves could maintain Christian identity within their politics. And so what I'm basically saying

is that the founding fathers were Christian nationalists in the sense that they wanted Christianity to be officially recognized as the official religion, favored religion of the government. And they wanted, you know, they wanted that Christian identity to be recognized because they recognized the importance of religion. Yeah. And what we've done is, you know, slowly over time, we have eroded that consciousness and that awareness of the importance of religion, particularly. Christianity within the public square. And we've said, no, we've come up with this idea

called secularism, which has never been in the history of the world, regarded as a sane notion that religion is this sideshow. And so really, you know, it's, again, what you were saying, like these people who hate religion, they don't want religion, particularly Christianity, in politics, they think they can maintain the culture that is downstream from the cult of Christ. Yeah. Because we forget that, you know, culture is the product product of cult. And I don't mean, I don't mean cult in the, you know, derogatory, just religious beliefs, exactly. And. And, And so they're trying to kick the ladder out from underneath them. Yeah.

Well, good luck, you know, good luck with that because you're not going to be able to maintain, as you said, those traditions. We use the word love all the time. Love is a Christian virtue. Yeah. It's a Christian virtue. Hope is a Christian virtue. And we love these words, hope.

You know, I remember when Barack Obama was running, it was hope and change, right? but hope is a a Christian virtue we're getting we're using these words because we're Christians and we're you know love we're using that word that's a Christian word that's that's not a word that is that that you can find in the ancient world right what's it's just in in again we just we don't understand like a lot of the history behind these concepts yeah um and And the forms of love that, I mean, you can find the concept of love in the ancient world. Obviously, there are ancient Greek words for love, but the kind of love that we see as a virtue today that we uphold and we say, you have to be loving. Even like the most secular atheist person will say, even though we have different definitions of it now, they would still say you have to be loving.

Being loving is the most important thing you can do. Now, of course, they see loving is completely affirming someone's sin, and we have the biblical form of love. But, again, everyone agrees. There are very few people out there who are going to say, no, actually hate is a virtue, at least in America. And they don't realize it's because they have been so washed over with Christianity for so long, the same Christianity that they say that they hate. Well, yeah. Yeah, even our, you know, nonprofit organization. are called charities.

Right. Well, charity is love. Yeah. So we've created these organizations called love organizations, you know? And that's, again, a Christian thing. Yeah. And that's why, and Christianity, you know, Christians are responsible for feeding the world and, you know, making the world a better place on a very practical level.

you know, the Red Cross, you know, and world vision and, you know, like, we feed the world. We take care of the world. We, you know, but that's Christian. That's like, that's the, that's the effect that Christianity has had upon us and upon our world. But these things cannot be maintained if you take Christianity away. And I simply want to recognize officially what we're already doing. Right. And I don't know if you have read.

You would probably love it, but I'm bringing up all the time. So my honest is probably annoyed with me talking about it all the time. But it's a book by a historian named O.M. Backey. And it's called When Children Became People. And it just emphasizes the point that you make. Like he looks at ancient Greece in Rome and how women and children and the elderly and the sick were all treated. While the adult free male was seen as, you know, the apex was seen as the only one who really contained logos. And Logos was how they defined value.

the ability to rationalize to speak. And women and children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, they were all kind of pushed to the side. Children especially were regarded as, you know, objects for sexual exploitation. At best, they were seen as people who could grow up and take care of their parents. At worst, they were seen as slaves or barbarians or basically on the same level as animals because they couldn't reason, like the adult free male. And when Christianity came along and disrupted the view.

of humanity in this pagan world that no, no, no, we're all made in the image of God. We are all equally dead and sin apart from Christ. We can all by grace through faith, be made alive in him. That completely revolutionized how the ancient world saw people, and in particular, children, because they said not only do we all have the same dignity as people made in the image of God, but we are actually going to show special care to children, the most vulnerable. The powerless among us, they are going to get special attention. special care, the hungry, the homeless, the sick. I mean, Jesus obviously led us an example of that. Yes.

Of treating the vulnerable and the marginalized, truly marginalized, not in today's progressive sense, but like with the most care. And then you see the establishment and the growth of hospitals, of charities, of homeless shelters, of schools, of children's hospitals, of adoption agencies, orphanages. All of these are Christian ideas, Christian institutions. that progressives today would all say in one way or another are good. And they think that they just came out of like the natural evolution of human compassion, which they think that we are all headed towards the more progressive that we get. And they do not at all see them as the foundation of America or the foundation of these institutions that they appreciate the institutions of charity like you said.

But they are. And when Christianity goes, all of those things will eventually go to. All of those things will leave our society as America is pushed into the margins. And I don't think that we can even think of those of us who have been able to be beneficiaries of Christianity and America for so long. I don't think that we can even fully wrap our minds around what a scary world that will look like because none of us have lived through pagan. You know, none of us have really seen that. We can see bits and pieces of it today with the gender madness and with abortion and all of that. All of those are just forms of child sacrifice that we saw in pre-Christian paganism. We'll see it in post-Christian paganism too, but on a much larger scale once, if, if Christianity no longer tempers, I think, the evil that we see today. Yes, I totally agree. On that note about hospital. there's a reason why all your hospitals are named after saints.

Right. You know, there's a reason why, you know, you have Lutheran hospitals and things like this. Because the church was the first organization to create hospitals. I believe it was St. Basil, the Great, who created the first hospital. And, you know, so we are, yeah, like, we are absolutely responsible for all the amazing things. Yeah. You know, and yes, and I literally mean that. I mean, you know, we invented the printing press. Yeah.

We, you know, we, you know, we, we're the ones that created the Renaissance, you know, that has, that has caused technology to, to, to, to bloom for better, for worse. But yes. Even the universities here. I mean, the university, you mentioned the states and I'll actually read some of those things that you posted on Instagram, but the university. were started by Christians with an express Christian purpose and intent. And it's not a, people need to understand it's not a coincidence that when these universities, when these states, when these places, when these hospitals have decided to forego their Christian foundation that the quality of the education and the care that they offer has gone down.

There's a reason for that. Completely. Completely agree. Yes. And I, you know, I think that there's obviously, like, again, we're seeing a resurgence of different things because, you have the classical school movement that's taking place, homeschooled, kids are being homeschooled. The internet has helped to help parents homeschool their kids. So you have a lot of Christian resurgence taking place within culture. And I just think that we need to continue to expand that and continue to promote these ideas. But yes, in terms of paganism and the return to paganism, I genuinely don't think that it's possible to simply remove the foundation of a home without destroying the home.

Okay, let's get into some of your other hot takes. And I have quite a few here that I'm looking at. And so let's see. Okay, here's one that I would just love to hear you explain that we are definitely an agreement on. religion is not your personal relationship with God. This is something that I hear a lot, that it's relationship, not religion, that Christianity is not a religion, that it's just a relationship. And I think we have a take talk of a pastor basically arguing that, right?

Stop one. Okay. And they'll always ask the question, so what do you do for a living? What happens is if you say, well, I'm a pastor, they'll say this, well, I hate religion. I always say, well, me too. And they're like, wait, you're a pastor. You hate your job? And I'm like, no, I just hate religion.

I'm not a religious person. I am a person that is in love with Jesus. Okay. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Do you agree that it's relationship and not religion? Well, yeah, I understand what he's trying to say. I get the spirit of what he's trying to say.

It's just bad thinking, though. and, you know, he needs to, you know, he needs to do a little bit more thinking, I think. He, you know, is trying to characterize Christianity as though it's a personal relationship merely. And then I would also say, you know, even within that, the problem is that that language, like it's a personal relationship, it, it, kind of assumes that it's on our terms. The truth is that our relationship, my relationship with God is not in any way, shape, and form on my terms. It's on God's terms. God is the one who sets the terms for the relationship. And, you know, I must, you know, if I want relationship with God, I must meet him on his terms.

And those terms, I would say, form religion. Because, you know, the word religion, etymologically, is simply derived from, you know, the understanding that it means to bind. It's like where we get the word obligation from. Yeah. Or the word ligament. It's a binding of things together. And so in that sense, religion is kind of like a restraint.

And I know we don't like that, you know. And I would say that perhaps part of the problem in America, particularly in American churches, is that we've cast off restraint. We've cast off religion, if you will. And we've said, it's just a relationship. It's just a relationship. I'm just in love with Jesus. Well, I'm in love with Jesus. You know, I think I could probably do better in my love for Christ, and I'm trying to grow in my love for Christ.

But there are guidelines. There is Christ allows us to have relationship with him, but not on our own terms. And the terms that he's set are in Scripture. The Word of God is essentially his terms. And the word of God accurately and properly interpreted also forms terms, which I would say historically has been the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed. That has, that creed has been the test of Christian orthodoxy, as in the thing that separates us from every other religion in the world, including Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and all that stuff for 2,000 years.

And so the scripture forms, well, the scripture makes claims that we have to adhere to. We have to believe. And so, you know, I say this, Christ did not die for a religion, but he died for a church. but the church is part of the body of Christ. And in that sense, as a body, it has ligaments. There is a religion to it. There's an order to it. You know, it's amazing.

People always hate on organized religion, but they love everything else to be organized. Why is the only thing that we want to be disorganized religion? You know, we, if I, if I said, would you like a disorganized company? Would you like a disorganized home? Would you like a disorganized body? No, they, everybody wants everything to be organized except for religion. Yeah. And except for their faith. And I just, you know, Chesterton, I think, said this, that the modern man is, is, is interested in introducing order into everything except his ideas. And, you know, there's an order in Christianity. There's an order, you know, even Christ's. said the first there's there's an order to the commandments christ said the first commandment is to love the lord your god with all your heart and soul and mind strength the second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself and you know yeah i just noticed on the he gets us commercial you know they're reversing the order there so it's in a sense part of part of our problem is that we have cast off restraint and the and the order that that religion brings to us

that it is meant to be, it is meant to be healthy. The Sabbath was made for man and man was not made for the Sabbath. So the point is that our, you know, religion was made for the church so that the church could properly grow as the body of Christ. And so, yes, we don't want to put the cart before the horse. Yeah. Or sorry, the horse before the cart. I'm just all a mess right now, but I'm getting all these analogies mixed up.

But the point is, the point is simply that, yes, we have to order things properly. Yeah. And religion helps us to order our lives. Yeah. And again, you'll find that the people who always emphasize relationship are the ones who really have cast off restraint in their lives. Yeah. And they kind of live lawlessly. You know, they don't have, if you ask them, you know, hey, what are the 10,

commandments. They don't know. You know, and they live like it. Right. And, you know, like in speaking of, in terms of kind of what you said about organization and other parts of our life, an order and parameters and definitions and rules in other parts of our life, we get it. But when it comes to morality or our ideas or our beliefs or our faith, like we say or some people say they don't want any order or parameters or anything. But if you're thinking about a relationship, A relationship, say a romantic relationship that is disordered or has no parameters or has no definitions, that's called a toxic relationship. A relationship in which I just do whatever I want and I don't care, you know, what the person says that I love and I don't care about any boundaries. That's actually more of an abusive relationship than a loving relationship.

Every loving relationship has terms and conditions. And that's not to say that we have to earn God's love. That's not to say that we have to clean ourselves up before God loves us. But as you said, if we love God, we will follow His commandments. We don't order, we don't follow His commandments for him to love us. But because he loves us, we follow His commandments. So there has to be a priority there. We first have the relationship.

That is what makes Christianity unique, by the way. There are other religions that are only rules. but we do have a uniqueness in that God became flesh in order to be reconciled to us and have a friendship with us. We do have a relationship. But from that does flow a religion. It does flow terms. It does flow, you know, there are ligaments that come from that in the body of Christ. Like you said, there are rules that we follow because of that relationship. Go ahead. Yes, we are obliged. There are things we are obliged to. Jesus commands us to do. do. Jesus said, if you, if you love me, you will obey my commands. You will keep my commands.

Paul, the apostle, says in Romans chapter one, he talks about the obedience of the gospel, that we are to be obedient to the gospel. When he says when Jesus comes back in first or second Thessalonians chapter one, he says he will punish those who are not obedient to the gospel. And so there is an obedience that is required. And this is a dirty word. You know, people, people do not like the word obedience. Or submission, definitely not. Or submission.

You know, all the libertarians are freaking out right now. Yeah. But the point is simply that obedience is a part of our faith. There are things we are commanded to do. And those constitute religion. And there are things that we are supposed to believe. And there's 12 articles in the Nicene Creed. And every single one of those articles is mandatory for Christian identity.

We have to believe those articles of faith. Those are articles of faith constitute, as I said, the test of Christian orthodoxy. And it's very simple, but we have to believe those doctrines in order to be Christian. And so, you know, this is not negotiable. But, you know, the other thing about sin is that it's, you know, like, because Christianity is a religion of relationship, you know, when we sin, I think St. Thomas Aquinas said that sin is chiefly an offense against God before it's anything else. you know, before it's rule breaking or something that is done against reason, which it certainly is, the main problem with sin is that it offends God. And I don't want to offend the Lord.

I don't want to offend God because I have relationship with God. And so I want to live my life in a way, as the scriptures say, First Thessalonians chapter 4, I believe, it says that you ought to walk in a way that pleases the Lord. I want to live my life in a way that pleases God. And because I have relationship with him, I want to be very careful not to offend God and to properly reverence him. And this is another thing that's gone away in a lot of our churches. Yep. Is this concept of reverence.

Because we've reduced everything to this concept of relationship. But oddly, we talk about relationship with the Lord, but oddly, we're not afraid of offending him. And what kind of a relationship is that? So I even doubt the genuineness of people who talk about, you know, religion or relationship without religion. Because as you just said, that actually breeds a very toxic relationship. Yeah, it does. And I was looking up, I was thinking as you were talking about Psalm 51. against, I can't find the verse at this moment. You probably know exactly what it is, but where he says,

against you and you alone have I sinned. And that's what I was thinking, as you were saying, that sin is against God first. It's not against other people, even if it is against other people. It's not against other people first. And I think about the fact, and I'm guilty of this too. I'm not just talking about our culture in general. I'm actually sometimes more worried about offending someone that I do not have a relationship with than I am. like offending God. When you think about, for example, like stating someone's pronouns or affirming someone's choice to have an abortion, like actually, I think, and this too reminds me of the spirit of the Hekitsos ads, like we're actually more afraid of offending people out there that we do

know and whose opinion really should carry no weight with us, who really would not care if we lived or died. And yet we care more about offending people that we don't have a relationship with, and offending the God that we say that we do have a relationship with. And that, going back to what you're talking about, is disorder. That is the disorder of the kind of relationship over religion thinking. Yes, absolutely. It's a lack of the fear of the Lord. And it's a lack of the love of the Lord.

Because when we love God, we fear him in a way that is reverent. It's not, you know, when we love the Lord, It's the we're not afraid of him as in, you know, terror, um, because perfect love casts out that, that sort of fear, yes, but there is a reverence. You see, uh, I don't want to offend my dad. I love my dad and, you know, I don't want to do anything to offend him. I'm not afraid of my dad as in, uh, being terrified of my father, but there's a deep respect and a deep reverence for my father. And that is like how we are to fear the Lord as Christians who love the Lord. We are to have a proper reverence for God.

And yeah, as you said, that observation is excellent that we are living in a day and age where we're more afraid of offending people than we are afraid of offending God. And I fear that the Lord is deeply offended with so much of our behavior. but we don't care about offending him. We care more about pleasing man and appealing to, you know, we have, instead of a fear of the Lord, we have a fear of man. Yeah. And the Bible says that the fear of man is a snare.

So we need to get back to the fear of the Lord and understanding that, no, like, I'm, I don't want to offend people, but I have to choose between who I'm going to serve. Am I going to serve people first or God first? Well, the command is to love the Lord my God first, the Lord our God first. And as the apostles said in Acts chapter 5, we must obey God rather than man. If man tells us to close the churches during COVID, sorry, we're not going to obey you. We're going to defy that order. And thank God for the pastors who did.

And it's shame on the pastors who didn't. Yeah, and who actually said, I mean, I'll just say, Andy Stanley said at Liberty Convocation, I remember he gave a virtual speech saying, oh, some people are saying the Bible commands us to meet together. And he did this kind of like, I think condescending thing where he was like, come close. No, he didn't. And, you know, he basically said that Christians aren't obligated to meet together. And there were a lot of pastors, not even like hardcore progressive pastors, but people considered conservative saying things like that. I was thinking. about the verse Matthew 1028 where Jesus says, don't be afraid of those who kill your body. Yes. But fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell. So it's not just spiritually wrong, obviously, to disobey God, but it's also like irrational. It's irrational for us to prioritize not offending someone out there over prioritized, not offending God because yet they can have, they do have some power. They can put us in jail if

it's the government. They can silence us. They can censor us. They can take away our ability to make a living. They can kill us. The worst thing that they can do. They can do all kinds of horrible things. They can take away your kids if you don't use preferred pronouns. I'm not saying that there are no consequences. But Jesus said it is, it's better that those things happen to you than you disobey God and you go to hell forever. Right. Right. Yes. Absolutely. You know, God is the author of our soul, and he has the right over every other right. And recognizing God's rights, you know, we talk a lot about the rights of men. We talk very little about the rights of God.

And, you know, God has a right to be recognized in the state, but he also has a right to be obeyed above the state and above every other human authority, because all human authority, all authorities derived from from his authority. He is the author, which is the root word of authority of all life. So his rights come first. Okay, let's talk about your favorite set of beliefs, your favorite ideology, which is feminism. Yes, I am a rabid feminist. You're the most feminist. You're the most feminist.

Okay, just tell me, can you, I don't even know if you can summarize. Can you summarize just like if someone were sitting next to you on an airplane and they said, okay, we got 30 minutes until we land into plane. Okay, not 30 minutes. Let's say 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Yeah, let's think of what we're, where we are right now. Tell me, what's your problem with feminism?

What would you say? Yeah. I would just say that the fundamental issue with feminism is that it, is gender dysphoria and it's rooted in a misunderstanding of of what it means to be gendered. That is such an interesting way to say it. And I love that. That's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, well, I suppose, you know, this is, I think all the problems that we're seeing with, with gender currently are, you know, the children of feminism. because in and this I would say this goes all the way back to first wave feminism. Now that's a hot take and that's a take that most conservatives won't say.

So yeah, let's hear it. Well, I fear the Lord rather than man. All right. You know, I do. I fear the Lord rather than woman, which is, which is, you know, I fear women more than men. But the point is simply that that, you know, the issue with first way. feminism is that if you read these these articles you know i'm referencing the seneca falls convention um i think it was in 1848 um they listed a number of their goals and it was essentially

all uh based around and a desire to um to basically be equal to men in in all things um and and but also to to attack the the understanding of what it was to be a woman up until that point. And that understanding of what it was to be a woman up until that point was a part of the basic, you know, order of society, Christian society. And, you know, even, you know, 50 years prior to that, you would have had Jane Austen writing these novels that we still read today and that we love. love. But Jane Austen wasn't a feminist. And she really understood the female psyche as well as, you know, the male psychology and how men think she actually writes very good, accurate descriptions

of men. But Jane Austen wasn't a feminist. It's, you know, 50 years later that we see the rise of this feminist movement that was really, again, gender dysphoric. And it was, it was an attempt to confuse the natures of both men and women. But it was mainly an assault on women, in my opinion. And it caused these women to rise up and say, you know, well, we've been oppressed. You know, where have we heard that language before? You know, we've been marginalized. Where have we heard that language before?

We've been, you know, and it's kind of like this proto-woke movie. devil's advocate. Like, couldn't it have been true? I mean, couldn't it have been true that women, say, in marriages, didn't have as many rights as men, say, for example, in some cases, women weren't allowed to file charges against their husband for rape, abuse might have been swept under the rug. Like, couldn't you have, couldn't you see how maybe some of that oppression and marginalization was actually true in that time and that there may have necessitated, again, just playing devil's advocate because I know what some people are going to say, couldn't you see how maybe there was a need for a movement that didn't say, hey, we want to be men, but said, hey, we're also made in the

image of God with just as much dignity and we should have at least the same rights of due process, at least the same rights to say we deserve not to be assaulted or to be raped and to have a voice in the court system that weighs the same as a man. Don't you see how, or couldn't she? you see maybe how there was a reason for that kind of protest or movement at the time. Well, it's an interesting thing that the feminist movement rose in the age of Queen Victoria because we're talking about the Victorian era, you know, an era of time that was based upon a queen, you know, a woman. I think that Christianity has, has in history elevated the position of women.

But I think that with the rise of democracy, particularly in the 19th, well, in the 18th century, you know, with the American Revolution, the French Revolution, these ideas of what it means to be a citizen were fresh. And I can see how there was more of a questioning of, well, do women get to be represented? as citizens. Do women get to be citizens? Do women get to have the vote? But again, when you when you look at these these issues as they've come one by one since feminism, take the vote, you know, women overwhelmingly did not want the vote. On a democratic level, just straight up, women did not want to be politically enfranchised.

Now, the question would be, okay, but, you know, would the vote have benefited some women who were in peculiar scenarios where, you know, let's say they were widows, you know, could the widows vote? Could the widows be politically enfranchised? Or, you know, when the husband died, you know, did she just not exist as a citizen? anymore, could she own property, things like this. Well, okay, I understand that there can be exceptions to a rule, but in general, no, I don't think that women needed the vote. I think that it was forced upon them, to be honest. And I think that what we've seen in a lot of cases is women being forced

to go along with an agenda that is actually against their nature. As I said from the beginning, I think feminism is rooted in gender dysphoria. And I think that, you know, it's been a movement that has regressed female development as it pertains to, you know, how women view themselves in public life. I think there's a confusion about it. And it's resulted, as I said, the child of feminism is transgenderism, where, you know, if there's really no difference between men and women, then really what's the difference at all in gender? Why do we even need gender? Can't gender just be, isn't gender just a social construct, just an idea of our minds?

Isn't sex itself just an idea of our minds? Can't we, you know, kind of bend this and shape this? That is, those are the logical conclusions from this premise that says that women do not have a particular role to play, that the female, that femininity does not have definition to it and that there are not particular things that women should do, that they ought to do. And again, you know, when you look at the articles in the Seneca Falls Convention, they pull, they're trying to pull women out of their wifely duty to their husband. They're trying to pull women out of their motherly duty to their children. They're trying to pull them out into the world,

into the workplace, into the public sphere so that women are no longer in the main. Again, I understand there are exceptions. I think, Ali Beth, you are an exception, a wonderful exception. But I think that there, I think in the main, you know, saying, well, you know, we just, you know, But basically, you know, fast forward until, you know, right now, basically what we do is we just cookie cut everybody. And we say, all right, women are going to do the same pathway as men. You know, women, we expect the women to go to all, you know, all years of high school. Same high school as the boys. We want women to go to college.

We want everybody to be getting together in college. We're going to push everybody out of college and into the career now and or to get your, you know, masters. And then, you know, you get your career and then you're, you're going to work that corporate ladder. You're going to climb that corporate ladder just like the men do. And then, and then, and look what it's produced. You know, we're at a point where, you know, we're below the, you know, Elon Musk is saying, hey, if we don't start having children, we're going to, you know, die off like a, like a, like a, like the dinosaurs. We're below the, the birth rate is below the replacement rate. And so we, so we're, we've, what we've done is we've said, you know, women need to do all

the things that men need to do. But then they, these women, they hit 35. They're unmarried. They, they start freaking out. They're like, what do I do? They start freezing their eggs. They start doing all these different things trying to get married. But then they realize, but they've, they've spent the, the best years of birthing years, you know, the prime years of birth thing in the workforce, in college, delaying marriage, delaying childbirth. And that's just unnatural. And so we're having less children. We're having less marriage. We're having, so, but this and this, I would say, this is because feminism has told women what to do and said, no, you will, you will act like men. Well, so now we just have a society of men now and people that act like men. It's like we,

no wonder we're not having kids. You know, there's no complementarity. There's no, the family isn't what it ought to be. It's an unnatural. Feminism is a, it's, it's foisting an unnatural expectation upon women and it's deleting femininity. You know, we talk about toxic masculinity, but really feminism is toxic femininity. And, and I think it's an attack on women. because some people will object and say, well, that sounds so misogynistic. It's like,

feminism is misogynistic. You know, I think, again, I referenced Jane Austen before, but, you know, when you're reading Jane Austen novels, you're not reading the novels of a woman. You're reading the novels of a highly intelligent woman who has no problem expressing herself. but she doesn't spend any time on the oppression of women. She, she, and, you know,

she, she was unmarried. She never married. I think she had, you know, an opportunity, but it was later and, you know,

she just bypassed it. But she was not a, she was not, you know, you know, rallying the troops, trying to, you know,

start a movement saying, you know, these, all the, all the female characters that I write, are oppressed. I mean, none of them were. And they were all, you know, she was just dealing with with women as women and men as men and society as it was. And, and, but yet in a highly intelligent way. And it was just, it was, it was, it was, there was a peace. There was a calmness in her writing

as it pertained to the differences between the sexes. And it was, it was like, no, this is good. This is healthy. And this is why we still enjoy these, these stories. But all that to say like, you know, if you look at the stories today, it's, you know, the stories today are all about a feud between the sexes. There's no peace between the sexes. There's war between the sexes. Because I think, you know, again, there's been a war on women, okay? There's been a war on women, all right? But by feminist. The war on women, in my opinion, is feminism. Yes. It has really hurt women. And again, I'm speaking in the main because, because, you know, I don't believe that every single woman, you know, I think, I think women can handle things differently. Some women are, you know,

one talent, three talent, five talent. There's, there's a, there's a degree of ability. But I'm just saying that what we've done is we've, we've essentially, you know, deep. sexed women and said, no, just act like a dude and don't, you know, delay marriage, delay childbirth, you know, do all these things that are against your instincts. And then you're going to be happy. Yeah. Well, I don't think, I think the studies even show that women are, are, are not as happy as they, they ought to be. Yeah. I don't, I just don't think this is a happy situation. And I know so many wonderful single women in their 30s who are unhappy. but at the same time have chosen, have listened, have listened to the deception of feminism,

you know, that is a little bit tantalizing because they do, you know, there is, there's a lot of bribery that takes place. Like, you know, you're going to be financially independent. You're going to be people are going to respect you. You're going to be an independent woman like Beyonce. Yeah. And, you know, Beyonce is not even independent. and she's married. So yeah. With kids. You know, I have so many thoughts on what she said.

And I, I know that when, you know, you say something like that, I know that you get a lot of, like, heated responses from people. And so my, I don't hear you saying, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't hear you saying that women have no talents or strengths outside of homemaking or child rearing or that they shouldn't ever be educated or that they shouldn't ever have a job. but that these things should not come at the expense of marriage and childbearing. And what I think of when you say that, and I agree, the more that you're talking, the more I'm thinking about how it really is kind of a form of gender dysphoria.

Nancy Piercy wrote a book called Love Thy Body. And she's not talking specifically about feminism. She does mention it. But she talks about the different forms kind of like body dysphoria where you are ignoring your tell-os and like your telos tells you something. Tel-loss meaning purpose. Like there is a teleology to the world, including the human body. And that is kind of going back to what we were saying about how people won't order in

everything except for in themselves. That is true now of gender. It's true now of our body. We see the purpose in a pillow. We see the purpose in a bird. We know that a bird can't be an elephant. But we do believe for some reason that we're so different that a man can be a woman and vice versa. And even if it is not in the form of actual transgenderism, it does come in the form of gender roles.

The fact of the matter is, is that a woman's body has a womb for a reason. And our tell loss tells us something, not just about who we are, but what we are for. Now, we know that we live in a fallen world. There are women who want to be married have done everything possible to try to be married, and they're not. who want to have children, they have tried everything possible to have children, they haven't been able to have children naturally. So we understand that, but that does not mean that in principle like women should be avoiding having children and marriage just because it is possible for us to do other things. If it means that we are like bypassing marriage and children to pursue those other things. So that's like that's what I hear you saying. And I agree with that. I also would

not call myself like, I love women. I love being a woman. I'm a mom of daughters. And so I do have a unique perspective in that I do see like the unique obstacles that we face. I do look at things around the world that of course women are always the number one victims of sexual violence. When you look at sex based abortions, women are girls are primarily the victims of those things. When we zoom out of the United States, you do see that when it comes to like the Muslim majority world and the far east and the Middle East, it is women and children who bear the brunt of like male violence and even systemic oppression in that it's literally like legalized to be able to abuse your wife and rape your wife in some of these and some of these cultures. So I view things like that

and I see that's a problem. What I say though is not that feminism is the solution to those things, but the gospel is the solution to those things. And that's why I don't call myself a Christian feminist, because yes, I do believe, of course, that women are of equal worth. Women can be brilliant. They can be talented. They can be hardworking. They can do all of these things.

And we have equal dignity. But I don't need feminism to tell me that. I just need Jesus because Jesus is who tells me that. And so the world needs more Christianity if we want to uplift women in the healthy, biblical sense, not feminism, which, as you said, has actually hurt women in providing for us hormonal birth control and abortion and pushing us into the 9 to 5 grind and telling us you can just freeze your eggs and then go through IVF when you're 45 and then have 20 embryos on ice that you pay to have frozen every month. That's, as you said, that is not liberation. That is not

what was promised to us by the first generation of feminists, and yet that is where we are. So I think I do find myself in agreement with you, mostly. Yeah. Well, yeah, I agree with everything you just said, really. I, you know, I might call it Christian femininity because I do think that Christianity maintains natural distinctions that are based on Genesis chapter one and chapter two and chapter three, but but the beginnings of of mankind, I think those distinctions are there and Christianity augments and amplifies those distinctions.

And, you know, in terms of the Muslim issue, yes, I mean, that's a false religion. And so they're going to, you know, they're going to treat people differently because they don't, they're not Christians. But as it pertains to Christianity and its relationship with the natural law, Christianity believes in the natural law and sees the natural law even clearer because of the light of faith. And so, you know, in that sense, I just, yeah, I concur with what you're saying. In terms of, you know, I didn't even bring up the abortion issue because I fast forwarded too quickly,

but yeah, abortion has essentially been used as birth control. And the, you know, the stats are astounding that, you know, the majority of women who get these abortions, they're single women. And they're, you know, and so basically they're being, you know, the women that are being targeted by feminism in many cases are single women. They're being pushed into this pipeline. And if they get pregnant in college, they get an abortion. If they get pregnant in their career, in their job, they get an abortion. And so, and then as you said, they, they hit, you know, their mid to late 30s and start freezing their eggs. There's a story about this woman who was on the front cover of this business magazine and she froze her eggs at 35 and she was this, you know, business leader.

Yeah. Have you covered this? Now, I don't think I covered it, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I mean, it's so crazy because, you know, I think 10 years later, she dethaws the eggs. She had, you know, 10 or 12. And I think eight died in the dethawing process. And then she tried to, you know, have, you know, she tried to have them, you know, I don't know the whole process. Yeah.

There we go. There we go. And it just, it all failed. And she just, you know, in the article, she just admits she's like, it was the worst day of my life. She's like, I just, I just, I fell on the floor yelling and screaming because, because there's a, there is something instinctive there that is a part of the identity. And, and, and, you know, it's, it's not evil. Like, women should not hate their body. They should love their body. You know, pregnancy is not a disease. Pregnancy should, should be. And, and this goes back to also the,

what we were talking about earlier in terms of being a conservative, we should be conserving family values. You know, why are we not conserved, that's a part of the reason why I'm an anti-feminist is because feminism is an attack on the family, because we're not just isolated individuals. You know, we're not just, and, you know, we're, so I, I oppose this radical individualism that feminism is rooted on. But I also oppose. You know, obviously the group think and, you know, saying that we're just, you know, we're not, we're not individuals. No, we're just big groups of people. No, we're, society is composed of families.

You know, the human race has come from the family. It was one man and one woman that God created, and they had children. And so I think, you know, there's a wonderful Chesterton quote that says, we will not return to social sanity. until we return to the family. And really, that's, I think, that should be a part of the credo of the conservative movement is that we want to focus on the family.

We want to recognize that the family is society in a small sense, in a miniature sense. Because the family is the first society. The family has its own loyalty. and its own laws and rights that come before, in my opinion, the rights of government. And so the family, if we don't start with the family, if we don't bring things back to the

human family, we're going to become more and more inhuman. And if we don't, you know, if we're not, if we're not understanding the importance of the family, we're heading for social destruction. because again, society is based upon the family. So if our policies, our social reforms and social policies do not begin with the family, which is the first society, then we are doomed. And so really my perspective on feminism is fundamentally rooted in the fact that I believe the family is God's plan.

And the family, you know, in terms of marriage, marriage creates families. Sex is meant to create the family. And so, you know, again, you know, we've sort of abandoned this notion. And unfortunately, you know, like we have some repenting to do as Protestants, I would say, because, you know, we've abandoned as Protestants the, the, you know, the, you know, know, Reformation teaching that birth control is immoral. And, you know, I don't think there was one Protestant theologian before the year 1900 who would have believed that that birth control was moral. But we've, we've acquiesced and we've compromised. On IVF, too. Like, I would say just

like one thing about Protestants and particularly evangelicals is that we don't have a cohesive theology of the body the way that Catholics do. And Catholics, obviously, we disagree on a lot of things, but I think one of the reasons why I have as many Catholic listeners as I do is because of how much I talk about surrogacy and IVF and things like that. And, yeah, a lot of Protestants just won't talk about those things because we don't have a cohesive understanding of what the, what biblical principles are when it comes to that. So, yeah, I agree.

Don't you think that, you know, we've kind of backed off because of fear or like, what do you think that where do you think that comes from um where do i think that comes from probably oh i could give an answer that my catholic friends would really like but i i i i like why have we my my question is more like why have we abandoned even as protestants the teachings of Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Synod of Dort, you know, like all of these, all of these historic Protestant positions on birth control, we've just abandoned them, but we still consider ourselves to be historic Protestants. You know, so why?

Okay, don't you think that most Protestants, unlike Catholics, we don't have, most Protestants don't think of ourselves as Protestants. Most Protestants think of themselves as Christians. and they would say something like Christians and Catholics. We don't really, I grew up Protestant. My family has literally been Baptist for 300 years. I went to a Christian school, kindergarten through 12th grade, and I did not learn maybe once about Martin Luther.

I learned very little about the Reformation. We didn't learn about that in our new Christians class when I was little and got baptized. We didn't learn about that. In Sunday school, we didn't learn about that as far as I, remember in any kind of Christian history class in my Protestant evangelical school growing up. And so it could just be a lack of attachment to our history as Protestants. And I don't know. Like I think that probably my Catholic friends would say, well, that's the problem with Sola Scriptura,

is that you aren't, you know, that's probably what they would say is that you've got all these different interpretations and you're not looking to any kind of like cohesive and a teaching on things or any like one catechism. And I think that we failed in that. I don't think that we should go for the Catholic Catechism, but I think most Protestants don't even know what the Westminster Catechism is. You mentioned the Apostles' Creed. I don't think most Protestants know what that is. So I think obviously there's so much beauty in the freedom that came from the Protestant Reformation in individuals being able to read the Bible, understand the Bible, understand what the gospel really is by grace through faith and all of that. But with freedom,

there are also some consequences. And I think the individualism that comes with Protestantism has led to some wonky theology. It goes back to like relationship, not religion. We can't talk about rules or commands or what is right and wrong when it comes to individual choice. It's just about you can say that you love Jesus and then, I don't know, do some of the things you want to do. Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose there's, for me, it's more of an issue of like, you know, were all of my forefathers's idiots?

You know, if all of my forefathers were idiots, then I hope it's not in my genes, you know, I hope it's not a, you know, a thing that I have to deal with, the idiocy there. You know, it's one of the, it's one of the questions that I have is like, why wouldn't we listen to the wisdom of our forefathers on these issues? why why do we just throw these things to the wind and say no we don't you know casting off restraint again you know like everybody before us are they looking down at us in heaven and just scowling you know do they do our do our forefathers and ancestors

all hate us you know that those are questions that I ask myself because because they because because I don't it's like I'm looking at what they're saying almost collectively really, you know, in church history, even if you read the church fathers, they're all saying, you know, birth control is immoral. The purpose of marriage is family life. The purpose of sexuality is children procreation. Well, you know, like, we've lost that concept. So why have we lost that? You know, what has it been, why has there been such compromise in the church on these issues?

And then we look around and we wonder why everything's going to pot and we're, you know, saying, well, this society sucks. And we're not even taking care of our first societies, which are the families, you know. So I just, again, you know, I'm, I'm an equal opportunity offender here. And, and I, and I just, you know, I don't just want to pick on the gaze, you know, I want to say, look, you know, we're acting just like them, you know, because we're having sterile sex. So what's the difference? What's the difference between our form of sex and theirs? You know, and it's, you know, so it's like when it comes to gay marriage, it's like, well, we're getting divorced all the time. Divorce is no, or marriage is no longer sacred, you know, and there's no longer a sanctity to this. So yeah, so now everybody's getting married, you know, look what we've done to ourselves. So I just, you know, I'm not a fan of hypocrisy. I want there to be consistency.

And but at the same time, I think that, you know, there needs to be obviously like this should all be connected to reason. And so I'm looking for the reasons in these things too. But I just, it's, I'm just coming up short when I'm thinking about why these things have changed over the years. And it just seems like we've changed, um, because. Well, the secret sensitive, the secret sensitive movement. And the, you know, C.S. Lewis talks about, I think it's in, I think it's in screw tape letters. He talks about how if you, yeah, it's not mere Christianity. It's definitely screw tape letters where he talks about trying to convince the patient, the person that the demon is trying to tempt, that every Christian virtue is puritanicalism or Puritanism.

And everything Puritan is too far. Sure, you can be religious, but not that. that kind of religious. So it's okay if you just sin a little bit and then you can be a cool Christian. If you convince him that things like chastity and sobriety or charity are all a Puritan form of religion, then you can convince him that really being a Christian is just too much and too radical. And today I think we see that with fundamentalism. Anyone who takes Christianity seriously, any biblical morality seriously, you might not be called a puritan, but you're called a fundamentalist.

Yeah. And the fundamentalist is the kind of Christian that you can't be. Sure, you can be a Christian. As long as you're okay, basically, with secular morality and you just kind of privately, you know, sing songs about God in your home. But that's the only form of Christian that you can be. You have to be the Christian that checks your faith at the door before you go into the public sphere, before you go into work, before you get on the internet.

Yeah. So I do think it's partly that, this fear of being fundamentally. list and really everything else that we talked about today, a fear of being seen as that kind of Christian, which is just a Christian who lives out Christian morality. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a, there's a tension there that I would say they're, when they call you a fundamentalist, they're arguing from association, which is a logical fallacy. They create a boogieman, you know, in their minds of, you know, fundamentalism.

and, you know, they're what they think it means. And then they project that onto you. And they say, you know, this is what you're doing. At the same time, at the same time, you know, I grew up in the 90s and my, one of my favorite albums was Jesus Freak by DC Talk. I was only allowed to listen to Christian music when I was a kid. And so that was that was what I listened to. And I love that album so much. But the more I thought about it, it's like, you know what?

I am a Jesus freak. You know, like, and I'm actually cool with that. Like, if I'm going to be a fool, I'll be a fool for Christ. You know, like if I'm going to be, if I'm going to be regarded as a fool, I should say. Because truly, objectively, we're not fools because we have, we're walking in divine wisdom. But the world doesn't see divine wisdom, doesn't understand it. and it and it thinks that we're fools. But yeah, like, you know, we have to come to a point where we, we surrender all and we become

radically Christian. And what I mean by that is to be radically Christian is to be in touch with the gospel, to be grounded in the gospel, to let the gospel turn, you know, our lives around and change. us in a radical way because, you know, it's getting down to the root system here. So, so I'm a, I'm a Jesus freak, you know, like, and I'm cool with that. I love that, actually. I kind of bask in that. I'm not afraid of being called a Jesus freak. I think it's awesome. And, and I think Christians ought to look at themselves radically and say, no, I'm, I am fundamentally different. I'm fundamentally different because I've been born again and I'm a new creation in Christ. As the Bible says, if any man is in Christ,

he is a new creation. Old things have passed away and all things have become new. Well, we have to regard ourselves that way. We can no longer be, you know, and again, if the association there is fundamentalism, well, yes, a fundamental change has occurred in a Christian's life. that doesn't mean that, you know, we're associated with fundamentalism in its modern iterations or forms. But the point is simply that, yes, you know, we are fundamentally different than the rest of the world in that sense. And we, the gospel is a thing that affects the human person fundamentally and changes the human person fundamentally. That's why Jesus said you must be born again. Gabe, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

I encourage people to follow you on Instagram, both your Instagram, but also the reactionary Christian, listen to your podcast, all that good stuff. They can get all the hot takes from you on a daily basis. So thank you so much for joining us. Hey, Allie, you are my favorite female podcaster. Wow. And I really appreciate that you offered to have me on your show today. It has, as I said, it's been a pleasure and a privilege.

Thank you. Thank you so much.