Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Tribalism Is Ruining Your Life

Episode Date: September 11, 2021

We're launching a new podcast! This episode is a sneak peek into Truth over Tribe. America is more divided now than at any other time in history (except the civil war, of course). The church is no different. The fissures aren't healing. They're expanding. Why? Is there any hope to heal? https://twitter.com/KeithSimon_ (Keith Simon) and https://twitter.com/PatrickKMiller_ (Patrick Miller) explore the roots of tribalism with executive producer Daniel Moore and look at Jesus' answer to the problem. Subscribe to https://podcast.choosetruthovertribe.com/public/98/Truth-Over-Tribe-9f32ad1e (Truth over Tribe). Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilman. And I'm Patrick Miller. If you've been listening to our podcast for a while, you probably remember that we occasionally have longer episodes. We'll go on for a lot longer than 10 minutes and talk about a topic at length. Now, here's the problem with those episodes. They are neither 10 minutes, nor are they quite Bible talks.

So Keith and I decided we wanted to start a new podcast where we do that thing. once a week. It's called Truth Over Tribe. We'll be talking about all kinds of topics that I don't think nice church people are supposed to talk about, but we think it's important to think through not just our political life, but our cultural life through the lens of Jesus. What does King Jesus have to say about these things? So here's the cool part. We are going to put these episodes right here on 10-minute Bible talks, probably for the first five or six weeks. You're going to hear interviews with people like John Mark Comer, Justin Gibney, Oz Guinness. We're going to talk about topics like how businesses have become woke. We'll talk about tribalism and does Jesus care about politics and even

the rise of the religious rights. We've got a lot of really interesting topics coming up. I hope that you will take the time right now, not just to listen to this episode, which is great, but also to go and subscribe to Truth Over Tribe on your podcast player. Do it right now. Just set down the phone. Truth over Tribe, find it, subscribe to it, listen to the episode there and join us on this new journey. Are you tired of tribalism? I think a lot of what the Left supports is satanic. The only time religious freedom is invoked is in the name of bigotry and discrimination. Are you exhausted by the culture war?

If they don't like it here, they can leave. You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Are you suspicious of those who say Jesus endorses their political party? Is it possible to be a good Christian and also be a member of the Republican Party? And the answer is absolutely not. From certainly a biblical standpoint, Christians could not vote democratic. We trust the lamb, not the donkey or the elephant. This is the podcast that's too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals.

I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. And we choose truth over tribe. Do you? You know what the world doesn't need? Another podcast. So why in the world are we doing? And we already have a podcast.

Why are we starting another podcast? You know there are 2,600,000, 951 podcasts in the world. That has to be like registered podcasts. I mean, most of those people are like, hey, I'm starting a podcast. I don't know. Podcast stats. How many podcasts are there? There's 110 million podcast episodes.

Why do we need another one? Why do we think we're going to make another one? Well, maybe we just can't find the one we want to find because they're so sticking many of them. Maybe there's one out there that's probably better than this one, but we're going to give it a shot. Okay. So here's why we think we need a new podcast. Maybe sharing our personal stories is going to help everybody enter into this space with us. I'm Patrick Miller. I'm a pastor. And I went to a private school. I did not think. I did not go to a private school school. Sometimes he's going to repeat that a lot. Private school Patrick. Yeah. Well, you know, I like to read. And someone on our staff recently told me that they thought I was more intelligent than you, Keith. Well, it's not shocking because I'm a public school kid. That's what I'm on the podcast for. I am also a public school kid. But part of me wanting to do this. podcast, Truth Over Tribe, has a lot to do with what I've seen happen over the last four years. And what I've seen is that Christians are being disciples more and more and more by media,

by their political party. It seems like we care more about our political party's platform than we do about what Jesus says. And it's driving a wedge, not just between Christians, but between Christians and Christians and culture. And man, we need a space where we stop yelling at each other, thinking about each other, like we're little headlines and actually listen and consider issues thoughtfully. I just don't see that happening in a lot of places right now. I'm Keith Simon, and I'm also a pastor. Patrick and I write the same church. And one of the things that you notice is that people watch cable news or scroll through their social media feeds or read articles far more than they read their Bible or they hear sermons or anything that's Christian. So most of the

inputs into our life exacerbate anger and frustration and division. They get people riled up. No wonder people are more anxious and depressed. So nobody should be surprised that there are outcomes that are pretty negative that come from being disciples by the media. Well, I think it wrecks our witness. If you think that becoming a Christian means becoming a Republican or becoming a Democrat or becoming anything other than a follower of Jesus, then there's a good chance you won't go forward because your own political perceptions will stop you.

If I remember that study, it's about parents. They care more about their kids getting married to someone in the same. party. Most parents care more about the kids getting married to someone who shares their politics and they do them getting married to someone who shares their faith. I'd just like it if one of my kids got married. You want to talk about that here? Pretty much I'd take anybody. Keith, Keith, we should introduce our third character on this podcast. You won't hear from him as much, but he's our executive producer, Daniel Moore. Hello. Wow. Let's try that again. Less creepy. Okay. Hello. Daniel's here for the sound effects, for the fun. And we do want this to be a fun podcast where we talk

about issues. Keith and I's motto, someone told me this annoyed them the other day. Our motto is we don't take ourselves seriously and we don't take you seriously either. That annoyed them? Yeah. They said it made people seem maybe a little bit little. And I said, well, I'm the littlest of the little. So I'm okay with that. But we want to have fun when we talk about these big topics, but we want to look at them not from the perspective of my tribe, which is on the left or the right. We want to look at them from the perspective of Jesus. We want to talk about big cultural issues that everybody's talking about it. For some reason, churches can't talk about it because they're too prone to put it into one camp or the other. Yeah, I think that we're going to get ourselves in a little bit of

trouble with some people because we're not going to shy away from tough issues that Christians are talking about outside of the church, but they're afraid to talk about inside the church. So several years ago, you had find that Christians would be debating biblical topics, theological topics, but that's not what really Christians are debating now. You're talking about things like predestination or baptism or speaking. in tongues, charismatic. Would you speak in tongues for us right now? I've never done that.

Have you? If I asked Daniel to do it, he would do it. Dan, have you ever spoken in tongues? I've heard of friends that have spoken in tongues. They actually truly said they did. Were you there when they did it? I was. I didn't exactly buy it.

I mean, what do you think they were just making it up? I mean, they were just like, so I asked, how do you speak in tongues? And he just goes, we just kind of start just going at it. And I was like, hmm, ah, I don't know if I'm in. I don't know if I'm just going to go for it. Just start going to happen. just go at it. Well, now Christians don't talk about those things anymore, though, right?

No, they're not the topics that are dividing people. Christians look about CRT or they talk about political issues. What divides Christians now are not biblical topics, but cultural topics, LGBTQ, sexual ethics, all that kind of stuff. Race, all those things. And this is not just over the last few years. Since the late 1800s, churches have historically been a little more, I mean, he's a fancy word, pietistic, which is really just the way of saying,

Piotistic. Private school. private school, member people. I'm thinking 3.14. Pie? Pie. Oh. I was thinking in your pie pizza.

Well, no, this has nothing to do with math. It's more about having a emphasis on personal holiness and spiritual disciplines. And Keith and I would agree, personal holiness, spiritual disciplines matter. In fact, our other podcast, 10-minute Bible talks, we're doing little 10-minute devotionals precisely because we do think having a day-in, day-out walk with God is incredibly important for your life. However, Christians haven't always been great at engaging. cultural topics in a winsome way. They either kind of go into this culture warrior mindset,

so you can think about people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell during the moral majority period. And it's really in the late 70s, early 80s that there's this merger between evangelicalism and the Republican Party in particular. But what's interesting now is we're seeing other mergers take place. I'm seeing Christians begin to merge their faith with democratic politics or with very progressive politics. And so it seems like we're more interested in making Jesus match our political stances again than we are in letting Jesus speak for himself and say, you know what, I'm going to be too liberal for conservatives. I'm going to be too conservative for liberals. That's worth saying. We didn't start here. Key, tell us your story about how you ended up

shirtless in someone's backyard. Okay, it's true. I did find myself shirtless. And it was- whoopsies, how did that happen? It wasn't because I had too much to drink. I didn't even drink any alcohol. I knew you didn't drink back then. Back then, no. All right, so let me set the scene for you. It's in 1994. And the question is, are the Republicans going to win the control of the United States House of Representatives? And I know that that question was probably not burning on your mind in 1984. That sounds so exciting. But somehow, somehow I was really into it.

See, I come from a very political family. And both of my parents were strong Democrats. Even my mom, a really liberal Democrat, still is today. So I'm not exactly sure how. maybe it's just because I was a contrarian, or maybe I really was persuaded by the Republican message. Well, it started with Reagan, but eventually, I mean, I'm one of the early adopters of Rush Limbaugh. I was right there in the thick of all that. And I found myself getting more and more excited about the idea that if the Republicans could have control of the House and the Senate and the presidency, then the country would all be on the right track and the problems would get solved.

And we'd have some sanity. You see, the Democrats up to this point, had controlled the House of Representatives for like 40 years. That's actually crazy to me. That's a long time. Yeah, I mean, it really wasn't a two-party system there. It was kind of a one-party system. So I got sucked into this whole thing, like I already said, that the Republicans could just win. All right.

So Newt Gingrich is leading this movement, and he's got this contract with America. I'm following it in the news. I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh. I'm so excited. Could this possibly happen? Probably not. It's like your football team has been predicted to lose. That's exactly what this is like.

But you know there's a chance, right? You're saying there's a chance. You got in on the wild card and maybe we could go all the way to the Super Bowl. Maybe, probably not, but maybe. So I'm in the backyard of a friend's house and we're sitting out on his patio and this is November. It's cold. We've got like sweatshirts on, right? All that kind of stuff.

And we're watching the election returns. And it's impossible. I mean, you know, each kind of congressional district, comes in with the results and you're like, well, well, maybe. And then finally the anchors, the news anchors, call it, call the election. And they say the Republicans have won the United States House of Representatives. Now, I'm married, you know, I'm responsible adult at this point. Supposedly.

But I'm running around his yard, waving my sweatshirt, yelling and screaming, like a circle, like a circle wave. Like a lasso. I was just so excited. Now, in hindsight, all that looks ridiculous, right? Hopefully you can tell, by the way I tell the story. So you don't feel like your hope was in the wrong place, the ripe? I'm ridiculous.

And over time, it hit me that the kingdom of God wasn't going to come through a political party because the Republicans did some good things and they did some bad things. And it turns out that that's exactly what the Democrats had done, some good things and some bad things. But it took a number of years to pass before I had that. perspective before I realized that my hope should not be in a party and who wins or loses should probably not get that much of a reaction from me. So my first presidential vote involves a lot less nudity than yours. I didn't take my shirt off or anything like that. It's not quite as funny, you know, but it's 2008. So just to set up my story, 2006 is when I became a Christian, when I was

19 years old. It's 2008, and Obama is running up against John McCain. And I became a Christian largely through some kind of liberal Christian movements. One of the first Christian books I read was Jimmy Carter's book about our values. I was actually rereading the table of content. It's crazy how much liberals have changed. He has a chapter in there about the sin of homosexuality. Yeah, he did an interview for Playboy, and people got really mad at him. It's just, it's, anyways, it's interesting. But he had a big influence. on my faith and my Christianity. And so it's time to vote. And I looked at the Bush presidency at the right old age of 2021 and thought, oh, what a failure. You know, he claimed to be a Christian,

but here's a guy who's started two different wars, one of them that seemed totally unnecessary. He's for torture. We're in the middle of a massive financial collapse. How is this a Christian president? And Obama comes along, and he has this message of hope and change. And I really bought into it. In fact, he came to speak at the university I attended, the University of Missouri, and I lived right off campus. I remember walking down the street with all these college students, and we're all feeling the buzz, not of alcohol, just like you. We're all in the moment. And I just remember talking about how we were hopeful. He's going to finally change America. And his speech was amazing. I've always thought he was a pretty good orator, at least his speeches

are some of the best that I've read. He's a fantastic speaker. And I go, I vote, and I watch over the next four years, as you said, as almost nothing changes. He continues to be involved in those wars. He, in fact, invents a new way of killing people, drones and executes that at a very, very high level. I don't see the poverty that I saw in Colombia and saw as a major problem. I didn't see it change. In fact, in some ways I saw it worsen during that period. And I just kind of had to come to terms with this person I put all of my hope in really hasn't lived up to my expectations. Man, you all just thought about politics in deeper ways than I had ever. Maybe more idolatrous ways.

Yeah. Well, so in the 2016 election, this is the first time that I chose to vote. This is Trump v. Hillary. And to be honest, I can't even say over a Christian podcast who I voted for. Really? I wrote it in. I spelled it incorrectly. But if you want to know, if you want to find out, just look up.

who got 9% of the presidential race in the state of North Carolina. And I'm curious because I genuinely don't know who you voted for, the other people voted for that you can't say. Oh, it was a big following. And it's a writing candidate? It was a writing candidate. A kid from Iowa started. Well, the kid from Iowa, he's 15. He started it.

But it got a good following. And it was hilarious. But it all goes to show that I just, you know, I was like, I don't trust Trump. I don't trust Hillary. So my vote would be better used as a joke. But here's that they did. It actually illustrates the point of exactly why I think we need a podcast like this. And it's because I think there are a lot of people.

A lot of Daniels out there. Well, there's a lot of Daniels out there. There's a lot of people who are exhausted by the politics. So they've just taken off, right? You want out of the politics. It's like, you know what would be a better use of my vote is a joke because this whole thing is a joke. And on one level, there's probably that kind of wants to agree with the statement. But my broader point, I think, is that Christians are supposed to be about God's kingdom.

And God's kingdom isn't just the afterlife. It's on some place we go when we die. Jesus saw the kingdom as something that was coming according to his prayer on earth as in heaven. And that means that we should care about ethics. We should care about culture. We should care about politics. And Daniel, your story only underlines the point that in this political climate, there's plenty of people who are out there saying, I want out. And one, I don't think anybody actually gets an out. But number two, I don't think that's what Jesus wants. I think Jesus wants us to care. Yeah. So maybe you're like Daniel, somebody who's exhausted by the political bicketts. Exhaired by the fighting. Can't really figure out what the right course of action is for your personal vote or for the nation. Or maybe you're somebody out there that just doesn't know where to get news anymore. You don't know where to get an honest take or a Christian take. And that's what we hope truth over tribe this podcast is all about. We hope that we can give you a perspective, a Christian perspective, that puts the lamb over the donkey or the elephant.

that isn't beholden to our tribe and our team, but instead let's Jesus set the agenda, not our political tribes, not even social media, not the news agencies out there, but what is Jesus concerned about? Because I think you're going to find, if you stick with us over the next several months, that Jesus is very political. He's not partisan, but he's very political. In other words, Jesus's kingdom has political ramifications for our world. And so you really probably shouldn't be sitting this out.

Jesus cares about your vote, your political life, just like he cares about your personal life. Yeah, the Apostle Paul said that we are citizens of heaven, Philippians 3. And that was a treasonous claim. I mean, Paul is actually a Roman citizen. And he's out here saying, you know what matters more than my Roman citizenship? You know what matters more than your Roman citizenship? It's your citizenship in this kingdom of God. And that means that we have a politic.

We have an attitude about how we should do. life together, how marriages and families should work, how we should share communal spaces, how we should educate our children, how we should, everything that you think about that belongs in politics. And by the way, almost all of life has become political these days. So nothing's off limits. That's something that Christians need to come at from a Jesus-centered perspective. But the greatest threat to Christians following Jesus' politic for all of life is escalating tribalism. Let's explore how tribalism is ruining your life.

So one of the things that we've all noticed is that this tribalism that is happening in our culture, this fighting and bickering and putting your team above the truth, it's been ruining all of our lives. Oh yeah, it's ruining tons of lives. It's ruining families. It's doing all kinds. That's the other reason we wanted to start this is that I think you'd agree with me. In the last two years, we have seen tribalism cause more family division, more people leaving the church, more people getting angry and upset and fed up than ever before in the last 20 years of the history of our church. Yeah, so tribalism is tearing apart churches, not over biblical issues, not over character issues, not even over values, but over political differences. It's tearing apart communities, too.

So back when the pandemic started, there was a group in our city called Love Coffee, and they hired people with disabilities and they put together coffee and cinnamon rolls and donuts, pastries, all that kind of stuff. And they were selling in the community, but because of the pandemic, their business, was taking a big hit. They were going to have to shut down. And we didn't want to see that happen because they're great people over there and these people needed a job. And so we said, hey, what if we just bought like a ton of cinnamon rolls from you over the next several months?

And they're like, gosh, that'd be a huge help, shot in our arm and help us stay open. And we're like, okay, now we had this problem because what are we going to do a whole cinnamon rolls? I said, let me eat them. They're like, okay, we can't do that. So we decided who could we give all these cinnamon rolls to? when we wanted to pick somebody who was kind of on the front lines, really doing hard work during the pandemic. And of course, that was teachers.

They were having to re-figure out how to teach without being in the classroom with kids. So over the next several months, we would pick a different school and then send cinnamon rolls as a thank you to the teachers. And that was going really well. I mean, teachers. He doesn't like cinnamon rolls. Yeah, I mean. You like cinnamon rolls, Daniel? I'm an orange roll guy.

I go to the different route. An orange roll? Orange rolls. I love orange rolls. I've never had an orange rolls. It sounds disgusting, and it's amazing. And it is disgusting. Okay.

So what we found is that the teachers were really thankful. They were kind of putting on social media. Hey, thanks to the crossing for doing this. It's really appreciated. And we were thanking them right back saying, hey, you guys are doing a great job. It was going really well until one day we get an email from an administrator at one of the schools in town saying that they didn't want our cinnamon rolls. And the reason they didn't want our cinnamon rolls is they didn't think that we shared the same values. values that they did as a school.

So this guy's like, hey, you know, we don't want your cinnamon rolls and we don't think that you stand for the same things that we stand for. And we were a little bit confused. I mean, what do you do when somebody doesn't accept your cinnamon rolls because you don't share the same values, right? I mean, I eat a cinnamon roll from the devil if I was offered one. But, okay, I picked that on our office door, accept cinnamon rolls contingent upon agreement on all things.

Yeah, don't put it on my part. That's yours. I'll eat your cinnamon rolls. weren't you called the devil at one point? Well, that was a different situation. Oh. So, all right, so what do you do when somebody doesn't accept your cinnamon rolls? And I think what you do is you build a bridge and you ask to go to lunch with them.

So that's what I did. And it's a long story, but eventually I get to sit down with this administrator and eat lunch. And we're just sitting there talking about life and summer and that kind of stuff. And finally it comes around to, hey, why didn't you want our cinnamon rolls? How did you frame that question? They weren't orange rolls. What if he said? Maybe he's an orange roll.

We're an orange roll community. So I asked him, why didn't you want our cinnamon rolls? And he explained that the issue was that one of the faculty members at his school had told him that she didn't think that the school should get the cinnamon rolls from the crossing because she didn't agree with our view on sexual ethics. Now, as he continues to tell the story, the more that time went by, he was able to talk some other people in the school district and do a little bit of research about our church. you realized that we weren't angry fundamentalist, that what we had said was pretty fair and pretty balanced and pretty nuanced. And so he had kind of come around to the conclusion that maybe it was okay to accept our Senate rolls. And when I heard his story, I started to have more appreciation for him because he was just trying to defend, help out, listen to one of his valued staff members. And if I had

been in his situation, maybe I would have done the same thing. But here's the point. We left that lunch conversation with this commitment. We want to work with people in our community for the common good, even if those people disagree with us. We don't have to agree on everything in order to work together for the good of our community, in this case, for the good of kids and the good of teachers. And I think we both left with a commitment to listen to one another and believe the best about one another, even on areas that we don't agree on. I think this is what tribalism does to us. It allows us to flatten people down into memes. So you weren't Keith Simon and the crossing was in the crossing. It was just this memeified version of us that is easy to say, oh, they're anti-fill in the

blank. That church is an evil church. They do these things. And no one is actually looking into the facts. No one is trying to be thoughtful and say, well, what do they really believe? What do they really think? How do they really talk about this? When you're in a tribe, it doesn't matter what the other person thinks. You just want to see the other person get beat. You want to see the other person lose. And I think you assume the worst. And like this guy said, the more he looked into what our church had taught and said publicly, the more he was like, hey, this is at least reasonable. I don't agree with it. But this isn't mean-spirited or hateful or hurtful or harmful in any way. But when you said earlier that everything has become politicized, this is an example of that.

Cinnamon rolls. Even taking cinnamon rolls from a church has now become a political. issue because you're saying, at least according to this one faculty member, that if I accept cinnamon rolls from this church, I agree with everything that church believes. Well, I don't agree with everything I believe half the time. I don't agree with everything you think, but we still work together at the same church. If we're only going to work with people that we have to have complete agreement with, then we're going to be more and more isolated and more and more unable to work together for the common good. And again, that's why we want to start this podcast. It's because that same tribalism, it's beginning to seep its way even into the church.

2000 years ago in the early church, they also struggled with tribalism. Now, it was ethnic tribalism. You had people from different ethnic groups and wanted to contend, my group is the best group. We're the superior one. And what Paul wrote to the church in Colossi is this. He said, this is chapter 3, verse 11, here, there is no Gentile or Jew. Your tribes that you brought in with you, your ethnic groupings, here are those things that matter. There's no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircised. Do you know what that means, Daniel? Barbarian? Yes. How about this one? Barbarian? Barbarian. Scythian. I can say the word. Okay, good. Slaver-free, but Christ is all and in all. Now, what Paul's trying to do is say that all of those identities that people brought into the church with them. He's not saying that they don't actually matter anymore, that they are just totally meaningless. He's saying they are now secondary. Christ is all and in all. Your union in Christ, you being one with Christ, makes you one with each other. And that's the most important thing about you. And again, what's dividing church today is not theological differences. It's political and cultural

differences. And I suspect that if Paul could write a letter to the church in America, he would say, here there is no Democrat or Republican, there is no black or white or Asian, but Christ is all and in all. Well, and like your point, of course there are black and white. Of course there are racial differences, political differences. The point isn't that we're all supposed to vote the same way or all belong to the same political party. The point is that those should be. be relativized in importance and that Jesus should be far more important with them. So that we recognize that we have more in common with a person of the different political party who follows Jesus than a person of the same political party who doesn't follow Jesus. That what we have in common in Jesus

makes everything that we disagree on much less important. One of the questions I find myself asking in the midst of this is, are things today, as far as tribalism goes, are they worse today than they've been in the past. I was having lunch with a guy who went to dental school in Chicago in the late 1960s. After Martin Luther King's assassination, there were a lot of protests that happened around the country. And some of those protests became violent. He talked about how there were fires. He said there were about 10 fires around his location. There were tanks rolling through the streets. And it highlighted to me that there's nothing new about tribalism. I mean, in the 60s, people are being assassinated left in, right? There's nothing new about what's happening. And yet, I wonder,

if today, I keep telling people, I feel like we're living through the 60s again, I wonder if today's tribalism is unique, if we've gotten worse in the last four years than we've been in the past few decades. Well, maybe in the past few decades, but we did have a civil war. Yeah. I mean, that's hard to top that. Yeah, so that's kind of my point. I don't want to exaggerate. There are people who have looked and said, hey, there's a situation. We can have another civil war. And these are serious thinkers who are asking the question because of these cultural and political divides. And I do want to say, I think that the tribalism we're experiencing today, specifically

around politics, is worse than it's been in a long time. Okay, this might blow your mind, because it blew my mind when I heard about it. In 1950, the American Political Scientist Association came out with a statement saying that the country is not partisan enough, that there is not a big enough partisan divide between republics and Democrats. And they said that this was really bad for the country. I mean, can you imagine by saying that now? There is such a stark difference. There's no way anybody now would possibly say there's not a big enough divide. And the divide is is bad for the country. But here's what they were saying is that republics and the Democrats overlap so much that it was hard for people to know who to vote for to enact the change or the policies that they wanted

because there were several Republicans who were more liberal than conservative Democrats. And then vice versa, Democrats that are more conservative than Republicans. And depending on where you lived in the country, you didn't know who to vote for if you wanted conservatives or liberals in power. Yeah. So you think about the Civil Rights Act, for example. People in both parties were for and against the civil. Rights Act. And so it made it really challenging. So, hey, I'm pro the civil rights act. That's what I

want to see happen in our country. Who do I vote for? Because I could vote for someone. He says he's pro civil rights, but his party might not be pro civil rights. And so it really was a big challenge that America needed to face. Another illustration in the same point that might blow people's mind is to realize that before the late 1970s, most Christians in the South were registered Democrats. Billy Graham, lifelong registered Democrat. Yeah, we'll get into Billy Graham later. He always identified more with Republican policies, but he identified with the Democratic Party because almost everybody in the South was a Democrat at that time. It's really not until, what is it, the late 60s and early 70s, and maybe even into the late 70s that the South transitioned

from Democrat to Republican. Yeah, so there's a scholar named Lillianna Mason who wrote a great book called, is it civil disagreement or is it uncivil agreement? Uncivil agreement. Uncivil agreement. 80% sure. Which is pretty high for me. Yeah. That's good. If I'm 80. percent. We're going to go with it. So uncivil agreement. And one of her points is that during this period, various identities start getting sorted together to create mega identity. So, for example, in the early 1970s, most Southern Christians were Democrats. By the end, if you were a white Christian, you would probably also identify with the right. If you were a secular white person, you would have a merger of identity with the left. And as these various forms of identity started

piling up, so it's race, it's education, it's religion. and they start uniting with political parties, it makes those political parties far, far, far more partisan, far more tribal. And part of the reason is it used to be that you'd have a relationship with someone who disagreed with you, right? If I was a Christian, I would probably know Republicans and Democrats who were Christians in the 1960s. That's not as much the case by the 1980s. And because that's not the case, it's harder if everybody around you is a Republican to say, hey, I think that there's such a thing as a good Democrat. That is so interesting to me because my entire life I grew up with just one set of people and you're just blown my mind right now because now I realize with the right. I grew up and just I don't know a single person that didn't, you know, George W. We loved George W. And you didn't know anybody that. I knew no one that went the other side. Because all your friends were Mormon? Because you lived in Utah. Private school life. Yeah, Dan actually did go to a private school. What was it called? Westminster Christian Academy.

But I had the exact same experience earlier. My mom became a Christian when I was in fourth grade. And so I'd been around the church in and out. And it was the exact same thing there. It was just it was an assumption of political identity, which in that case, just like you, united with the right. Yeah, I see my experience is completely different. I didn't grow up in a household that was church going at all. And my parents were both involved in politics. But we had people on both sides of the aisle in and through our house all the time. And so I think pretty early on, I realized that one part party wasn't all good and one party wasn't all bad. And yet, having said that, I think after I became a Christian in college, I started falling into the trap that all Christians were supposed to vote for a particular party. And at that point in time, it was a Republican Party. I know each generation Christians tend to identify with a different party. Well, that's really a true statement. That's what we're highlighting here. There is a generational thing that happens where, again, these identities start uniting. And again, the most significant thing here is to not have a negative view of someone in a different party or a different tribe, you almost certainly have to know someone.

If you don't know people who are different than you, it's easy to demonize. It's easy to believe the worst about them as people. Yeah, but the only way you know them are these headlines. So when I got together with that school administrator that we talked about earlier, what we found is that we had a lot in common and that we kind of liked each other and that we could be friends and work together, even if we didn't agree on things. But if you don't know people who are part of the other party, then you start believing that they are horrible people who are out to kill America or take your kids away from you or take your job from you or whatever. Yeah. And odds are, that's where you live. Most Americans live in places where they will find it difficult to find

others who are on the other side of the political aisle. So to illustrate the point, a landslide county is one in which a presidential candidate wins at least 60% of the vote. Okay. So they win by a very large majority. That's a landslide county. Now, in 2020, we had 1,726 landslide counties. That's 57% of all the counties in the United States. Now, maybe you think, oh, that doesn't sound that crazy to me. Half of our counties are either heavily Republican or heavily Democrat. But here's what you need to know. In 1980, there were only 391 landslide counties. Only 12% of American counties were defined by one political party or the other, which meant you had a, hey, high, high, high chance of meeting and being around people who disagreed with you.

Yeah, this is all called The Big Sort by Bill Bishop, who wrote a book by that same title, and that more and more we're beginning to live around people who think and act like us. And that allows the demonization of the other side to take place. But also what people find is that when you talk to people who agree with you, it just solidifies that you are right and that the other people are wrong, because your views are never challenged and you don't ever have to. You are fake news. You don't ever have to deal with the fact that there are good people who think differently than you do.

Well, and it's not just that you actually become more polarized. If you don't have a relationship with someone who disagrees with you, you will become more and more and more either right or left. There's tons of studies that show this. If you have a relationship or more importantly several relationships with people who disagree with you, it will moderate your views. You will move towards the center. And so we call this living in the bubble. And we live, interestingly enough, in a blue city in the middle of a red state. Okay, can I just say something?

Those colors, to this day, I have a hard time keeping them straight. Red and blue? I know. Isn't that weird? I always thought blue was Republican because it was my favorite color. And that's what I grew up as. I always went a different state. I always, you know, conservative, conserving refrigerators, blue.

Wow. Where did you go? Conservatives, conserving, conservative. Blue? Conservatives, conserving. refrigerators conserve food, they keep it whole and they're cold and they're cool, whereas liberals are maybe a little more progressive, changing, fire, heat, red. It's backwards, though. The colors are wrong. I just want to say this officially. The colors are

wrong. Next time we're going to do this podcast sober. What are you talking about? Anyways, just because we've confused anybody here, red is for Republican. Keep the ours. This is how I remember it. And blue is for Democrat. So the New York Times had this thing on the website where you could put in your address and see how, I think it's a thousand people around you who live closest to you, whether they're registered Republican or Democrat. So let's do that now and see how it goes for us. Okay. Yeah, so let's do this. This will be fun for us to look at our neighbor. It's. Remember, most Americans live in a bubble. They live in a right wing bubble or a left wing bubble. And so the question is,

do we live in a bubble? Now, you and Daniel live in the same neighborhood. So he lives. He on the nicer side of the neighborhood. That's actually true, which is funny. It's not even close to not being true. Keith leaves across the street from a Mormon church. I live behind the Mormon church. Let's put in your address, Daniel. And we'll see.

There's also, did you put it in? I'm in. We're live. So, Daniel, scroll down here. Okay. And it's going to tell you, okay, so I'm going to describe the scene. There's all these little dots that are red and blue and showing you how many people in your neighborhood go to each party.

So, Daniel, what are the total percentages? Okay, so we're looking at 48% as Democratic, 52% as Republican and less than 1% as independence. So that is super like even. We're right down the middle, bro. Do you think your side of the neighborhood voted one way? I doubt it. I mean, it's pretty close to the same, but we live pretty close to each other.

I just want to say this. This doesn't shock me. I mean, our community is a very split community. So we have lots of cross-cutting relationships. Okay, let's do my address. Scroll back up to the top. Okay, we're looking at 56% as Democratic in your neighborhood. I'm a little more left-leaning in my neighborhood than your neighborhood.

I know where you live, though. I don't know what the difference is between our neighborhoods, but. Okay. How many Republicans? We have sidewalks in our neighborhood. Must be a lot of professors over there. We actually do have a number of professors in our neighborhood. That always makes it more liberal.

So it's 56% Democrat and the website doesn't give us the total number of Republican and Democratic, but I did the other day, and it did. And it was something around, I think, 43% Republican and the rest were all independent. So we had a decent swath of independence. But still, according to the New York Times, neither of us live in a bubble. But isn't it interesting that you, more left-leaning, have found a left-leaning neighborhood in Columbia? It's not a left. I mean, again, remember, they said I'm not in a bubble.

No, but you're a left-leaning. Yes, I'm in a 56% left-leaning neighborhood. It fits you perfect. Somehow, I love that you're calling me left-leading. I don't lean in any direction. I just fall over. Oh, right. You're just for Jesus. I forgot. I don't. You can say whatever you want to. I'd probably follow that a thick swath of independent. Oh, yeah. There's so smart. Here's the point, though. We are in a community, as Keith already said, that is very split between Republicans and Democrats. And that's obviously shaping our context and our experience.

When I think for a second about someone who lives in a county where 70 or 80% of the vote went to Donald Trump. And they hear that Donald Trump lost the election. And they're saying someone must have stolen the votes. It actually makes you realize that's not a crazy statement. If every person you know voted for Donald Trump, you would start feeling like, oh my gosh, how could he have lost? Yeah. So this is a story about a woman named Pauline Kale, who is a New York film critic. And it's the 1972 election between Nixon and McGovern.

She lives in Manhattan. And when it comes out that Nixon wins in a landslide. It was the biggest victory in American history, right? I think McGovern won one state. It was Massachusetts. He didn't even win his home state of South Dakota. Okay. But that's neither here nor here there.

The deal is that Pauline Kale, this New Yorker film critic, said she knew no one who voted for Nixon. Now, Nixon had won her state. She didn't know a soul. He won every state but won. She didn't know a soul that had voted for him. Because why? Because she lived in a political bubble that the people she interacted with and her job and her friends all voted for McGovern. They were anti-Nixon.

And so if that's the situation where we all are hanging out with people who think like us and then the other candidate wins, we're like, well, maybe something nefarious happened. Maybe this election was stolen because I don't know anyone that voted for the other person. I'm not trying to make fun of anybody who thinks that the vote went one. way or the other. I've already gotten in trouble for that more times than I can count, not making fun of people, but people thinking I'm making statements about it. I'm just trying to make a point. We don't know each other, which makes us more polarized. We don't know each other, which makes us think that nefarious things are happening. In fact, there was a really interesting study that showed how poorly Republicans and Democrats know each other. Do you want to share some of these stats?

Yeah, look, I get lost in numbers, so let me try to keep this as simple as possible. But what this is showing is that Republicans, Democrats have no real idea. of what the other side is like and what they believe. So catch this. Republicans estimate, and this is all by the way of 538 off their research. So a very credible source. Republicans estimate that only 50% of Democrats are proud to be an American. So Republicans out there think half of Democrats are not proud to be Americans, but the reality is that 80% of Democrats are proud of their country. Yeah, Republicans estimate that 66% of Democrats favor open. borders, but in reality, only 30% do.

Republicans estimate that 46% of Democrats are black, which if you just think about it mathematically, that doesn't work. I'm not a math guy, but that just doesn't work. But reality is that 25% of Democrats are black. Republicans think that 38% of Democrats identify, it's the same thing. 38% of Democrats identify as LGBTQ, but only 6% do, which again is, I mean, the LGBT community makes up about three, to 5% depending on what numbers you look at. Depends on how you count it, but there's no possible way that 38% of the Democratic Party

could be LGBTQ. I mean, we're laughing because it's absurd based on the numbers. But again, it just shows how little Republicans know about Democrats. Now, let's flip it the other direction. It goes the other way. I mean, this is one of my favorites. Democrats estimate that 44% of Republicans make at least $250,000 a year. I mean, wow.

But really, only 2%. That's insane. Only 2% of Republicans make that money. What portion of our population makes that much money? It is a tiny, tiny fractional part. I'd become a Republican if I made that much money. Oh, so you don't make that much? No.

I will never see that much money in my life. Democrats believe that only 40% of Republicans agree with a statement, many Muslims are good Americans. But the reality is 66% do. Now, I'd love to say that 66% is still too low. that I wish more Republicans believe the statement. It just goes to the comments I hear people on the left make about people on the right. They'll use phrases like racist, xenophobic, anti-fill in the blank. And the reality is that that might be true of some people in the Republican Party is certainly

not descriptive of the majority. Okay, one more. One more because I like this one. Democrats think that only 50% of Republicans recognize that racism still exists in America. But the reality is that 80% of Republicans realize that racism still exists in America. So there is a lot of common ground, even on that polarizing issue. Now, what you do with racism existing in America, well, it gets complicated and hard and a vigorous discussion takes place. But at least we could all agree that, man, racism is still an issue that we got to deal with somehow. Yeah. So let's paint the whole picture here. So Republicans believe, on average, that Democrats are anti-American. They're not proud to be American. They are almost entirely black or LGBTQ. Or both. Or maybe both in that they all

want a free for all at the border. That's the Republican picture of the average Democrat, which turns out to be entirely false. And the other way around is equally silly. Democrats think that Republicans are all one percenters, mega wealthy, who are denying racism and hate Muslims. Yeah. So no wonder there's polarization, right? No wonder you've got, I don't want to work with that party. I don't want to believe the best about them. I don't want your cinnamon rolls, sir. Okay, so here's what we've established, is that tribalism makes your life miserable. It tears apart your relationships, it tears apart communities, it tears apart churches, it causes you to believe the worst about other people and to demonize them and therefore to live in fear of them. How do you get to be that way? Is this something

that we've learned from our culture? Is it something that's kind of hardwired into us? How in the world do we get in a point that we were all so true? tribal. The question is, do we come out of the womb tribal? And in the 1950s, there was a probably incredibly unethical study, which was done where they took all of these fifth grade boys and they brought them to a camp for, I think, three weeks. And they divided them into two groups, which called themselves the Eagles and the Rattlers. Fifth grade boys are the best. I mean, Eagles and Rattlers, where you get that. They should have picked like third grade. I mean, third grade is a lot more fun than fifth grade. But anyway, that's why they pick fifth graders because fifth graders are little

bullies. Yeah, that's right. So they bring them in it. They spend the first week, just building team camaraderie. They don't see each other. Eagles are in one camp, Rattlers are in the other. Then they bring them all together and immediately they start demanding competition because they want a trophy.

Of course they do. I mean, Napoleon said that men will do all kinds of crazy things for a little piece of ribbon they can put on their chest. Trophies are awesome. Trophies are awesome. Fifth graders will kill each other for a trophy. Yeah, they literally will. They start competing and it's just fun, athletics,

but then things start getting violent. They almost get into a fight. They begin to throw rocks at each other. This is legitimately the plot of the Hunger Games. That's where she got the idea for the Hunger Games, right? There we go. There it is. That is the summation right there of the Eagles and the Rattlers.

And they become irrational, too. One boy gets into the pool early one morning and lo and behold, it's cold. He gets out and he says, oh, the other boy, they came over and they must have poured ice inside of our pool. Who would have thought that the pool would be cold in the morning? I mean, crazy. Yeah. Here's the deal. Does it show that we come out of the womb tribal?

Well, yes, all you need is a trophy on the line. And fifth grade boys will literally try to kill each other. They'll go straight up hunger games. Because if you will fight over a trophy, if you'll immediately divide yourself into groups that will go out, it concoct false stories, attack one another, accuse one another, come up with names for each other. How much more will we do that when there are really important things on the line? Yeah. And I think a lot of adults respond to this.

And they say, well, look, we know fifth graders are immature, but I'm an adult. And I don't think like a fifth grader. So that might be true of them. but it's not true of me now that I am a rational thinking person. Are we really smarter than a fifth grader? Do you just remember this show? Did you ever watch this? I didn't watch it because I knew I'd probably get the questions wrong.

My little fragile ego couldn't handle it. You couldn't take it. No. It was tough. So there's a scholar named Henri Toshevel and he develops a study to determine what's the minimum requirement to get adults to go at each other's throats. Yeah, so what he does, he gets a bunch of people together. He has to sort them into two groups. And so he tries to think, what's the most minimum.

meaningless group I can assign them to. And so he shows them a bunch of dots on a wall. And he asked them how many dots there are. And then he divides them into groups of overestimators and underestimators. Do you think you would have been an over or an under? You don't know. I haven't any. So does that answer the question? You were definitely an under. You've just got this like downer personality. I'd be an over. I've got hope. Yeah, I have no hope. Okay. So he divides them into these groups, almost randomly. They don't know each other. They know they'll never see one another. So there's nothing personal on the line. And then he asked him this question, would you like everybody to get $5? Or would you rather have $3 and the people in the other group get $1? So what you should do there,

right, is you should say, we all get $5.00. Because who cares if I'm an overestimator or underestimator? But of course, that's not what they do. This legitimately reminds me of a meme I recently, it said, if you could get paid $50,000, but the person you hate the most in the world gets $100,000, would you do it? First response, why would I not want $150,000? Self-hating pays off. And that it's, it does. But that's exactly what happens inside of this study. People begin to select. You know what? I want the $3 as long as the other group makes less money. And it's all based, like he said, on something totally meaningless. And what's crazy is that Henri Tajvel, he has. assume that everybody, based on overestimating and underestimating, he assumed they'd all pick the

$5 because why would that matter? But as it turns out, even the tiniest, most inconsequential thing will turn adults. These are all adults will turn adults into tribalists. Yeah, so if we come out of the womb tribal and if it really doesn't take much at all to separate groups and to make them fight and hate each other and try to punish the other group, now what happens when there are really important values at stake, like life or economic or racial justice. Or a political candidate. Not only will we war against each other just because our tribe likes to win, but we will concoct stories about how the other tribe is bad, all in the name of what we define as justice. What we would see as winning, because we want our team, our side to desperately

win. In fact, we care more about winning than we do about the truth. Now, there's one more little wrinkle we need to throw into this, which is social media. Go back to the 1500s, actually late 1400s when the printing press is invented. Gutenberg. It causes 200 years of wars. Why? Well, it's because it's this new information technology that allows people to spread both information and disinformation and people begin using that machine to tribalize it, to break up into their groups and to get into little echo chambers where they only hear their perspective and they have to be right. Wait, wait, echo chamber. I feel like I know what that word means, but what does that mean? An echo chamber is when we only listen to people who already believe what we believe. And so we're just hearing other people

confirm or affirm our prior beliefs. So you get out of the echo chamber, you begin to listen to people who challenge your beliefs. And the printing press was really the first time we had information echo chambers, where you could live in a world where the only pamphlets you read, the only books you read, agreed with your position and demonized the other side. Now, fast forward 500 years, and we're living in the era of the internet. And all of a sudden, we have social media, which as it turns out allows us again to go inside of these echo chambers where we only hear perspectives that agree with our own. And that's exactly what social media is motivated to do. It's motivated to tell you what you already believe because what that does is it gets you

outraged at the other side. It gets you fearful about how the other side is going to hurt you. And that's how these social media companies make money. They make money when you stay on their platforms. and the way to keep you on their platform is to make you scared and angry. Yeah, I mean, you've heard it said that sex sells, but what all of these social media platforms have realized is that actually one thing sells better than sex, and that's outrage. It's anger. You will stay on Facebook longer if you are reading articles that make you angry, that make you fearful.

And by the way, this is literally their business strategy. In 2018, Facebook had a presentation on one slide. This is what it said. This is from an internal Facebook presentation, which was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. but this is what they said, our algorithms, so machine learning, machine intelligence, which is probably smarter than anybody sitting in this room, is our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness, to tribalism in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform. So Facebook's business model is literally to force you into an echo chamber

where you only hear people who agree with what you agree with and then to cause you to become outraged at the other tribe, at the other group, because they know that when they do, this, you stay on their platform and then they can put ads in front of you and they can make money from advertisers. We're living in kind of the repeat of the beginning of the printing press all of a sudden. And I do think we're at risk of the same kinds of wars, maybe not literal wars, but we're certainly living through figural wars as we're trying to figure out how to live in this new media environment. So if the fifth grade boys teach us that tribalism is innate and if the over and underestimators teach us that it really doesn't take much to cause us to hate the other group. And now on top of that,

this new form of technology is causing us to spend time only with those who already agree with us. This is the recipe for disaster. This is the recipe for tearing apart communities and families. This is the recipe for human tribalism and to exacerbate all those dark tendencies that lie within us. It's had a tremendously negative effect in our personal lives and in our culture. And I think that the church has something to say to this, or actually more to the point, Jesus has something to say. There's got to be some way to escape this. And Jesus offers a way out. And that is to be a part of his tribe. When you think about Jesus in his day and his age, he lived in a

world that was as tribal as our own. There were Pharisees and Sadducees and Romans and Herodians and Zellids and Ascans. Jews and Samaritans. They all fought against one another. They lived in their own isolated bubbles. They didn't know each other, which we've already talked about. And Jesus, all these people, they wanted to claim Jesus for their side, which I feel like is, what's happening right now. There's people on the left and the right and every other place trying to claim Jesus for their side. But back then, Jesus refused to pick a tribe. Like Keith said, instead, he started a new tribe, a tribe which welcomed all people from every tribe, a tribe for people from every tongue, every nation. It does not matter. Everybody is welcomed into the Jesus tribe.

And he told us that all of his followers, all who are going to join the Jesus tribe, they must love their enemies. They must build bridges, not walls. They must put others' interests above their own. In other words, what Jesus does is he destroys the kind of tribalism that pits us against one another and asks us to join his tribe, a tribe of diverse people, a tribe that is based on grace, not merit, a tribe that loves outsiders. I think if you're looking for a healthy church, this might be one of the best signs you could look for. Walk inside of that church. Obviously, you can look for ethnic diversity, You can look for socioeconomic diversity. But right now it seems like the biggest thing you might look for is ideological diversity, political

diversity. If you can be inside of a church where there are liberals and they are conservatives, it's a sign that those people have said, yes, we have differences, but we have something which binds us, which is greater than that. And that's Jesus, because he's welcomed us into this collective tribe where those differences aren't what matters most. I guess that's part of our point here is that this podcast, Truth Over Tribe, isn't designed to get you to change your mind on all the important.

important issues. That's good. What it's designed to do is to relativize the importance of those issues. What it's designed to do is to say that your allegiance to Jesus should trump your allegiance to a political party or to a political candidate. And along those exact same lines, Jesus said that the truth will set you free. And so the way out of the echo chamber, the way out of this us versus them tribalism, it's joining the Jesus tribe and saying, okay, Jesus, you know what the truth is. I don't know. I don't have the corner on the truth, but you know what the truth is. And that truth can see, set me free from hating the person on the other side of the aisle. And that's exactly what we want to do. We want to bring the truth to bear on politics, on culture, on current events so that we're

not disciples by the media, by our echo chamber, but instead are being disciples first and foremost by Jesus. That's really good. Are you disciples more by the media or by Jesus? Does the kingdom of God set your agenda or does Twitter? And because we are going to try, no, we're not going to do it perfectly. We have all the same problems you do. We're prone to tribalism just like you are. But what we're going to try to do is let Jesus set the agenda. Now that's going to mean that we are too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals because there's no political party, no political candidate, no church that is completely aligned with Jesus's platform. And there's never a point where we probably shouldn't be open to hearing other perspectives. Because one thing I've learned

in my life is that the less tribal I've become, the more I'm open to outside perspectives that then I realized, wow, I had that issue wrong. Jesus is in a different position than I am. Along these lines, just you're wondering, hey, where's this podcast going to go? Here's where it's going. We want to start with our own house. Keith and I and Daniel, we're all evangelicals. And we all became Christians inside of these evangelical movements. But we're not sure if we want to still be called evangelicals. I mean, even hearing you say that, there's part of me that, well, there's part of me that wants to embrace it and there's part of me that's embarrassed by it. And that's what we're going to explore. at the beginning, right? Where did this term evangelical come from? What does it mean to be an evangelical today? Is it a term that we should embrace or one that we should run from? And maybe what's some of the baggage that comes with the term evangelicalism? When we think about issues like race, gender, sexuality, how do those things interface with that particular identity? Why are we doing this? Because we don't want to be tribal evangelicals. We want to look at our own life and detribalize from our own groups that we can put Jesus first, even Jesus

before being an evangelical. So what's your next step? Well, obviously, you can subscribe to this podcast and you can go on this journey. It's going to take us about a year to get through a lot of these thoughts and we're going to interview a lot of people, some who are going to be in strong disagreement with us,

but that's part of the goals. We want to listen to everyone graciously and kindly. Look, we've got this next year planned out and it's a pretty cool year. A lot of interesting topics, a lot of interesting guests that we're in the process of speaking with. And they're going to push your buttons.

You're going to have to wrestle with people who love Jesus and who think differently than you. And hopefully you're open to that. Hopefully that's what you want. Hopefully you want to escape the echo chamber and just listen into the same news sources that you've always listened to and be confronted with ideas

that maybe you disagree with. That's healthy. It's healthy. And it's fun. I mean, I think it's fun. Maybe I'm weird. I'm a glutin for punishment. You are weird.

It's not for those reasons. Different things. That's good. No, go to our website. Choose truth over tribe. That's choose truth over tribe.com. And you can take our how tribal are you test. It'll tell you how tribalized you are, which side you're tribalized on, and then it'll offer you the opportunity to detox. You can detox from the left. You can detox from the right. And then go on this journey

with us. Set down your arms. Set aside those things which are secondary in your life and say, I want to put Jesus first and I want to be in his tribe, the tribe that welcomes all and loves all. Thanks for listening. If you found this podcast helpful, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. And make sure it's at least five stars. Stop, no, just be honest. Reviews help other people find this. Okay, okay.

At the very least, you can share today's episode, maybe put it on your social, your favorite text chain. And if you didn't like this episode, awesome. Tell us why you disagree on Twitter. At Truth Over Tribe underscore. We might even share your thoughts in an upcoming newsletter. If you're still listening after the credits, thanks so much. much for joining us. I really hope that you will take the time right now to go and subscribe to Truth Over Tribe on your podcast player. We want to go on this journey as a community, thinking

about politics, about culture, about our life together in a Christian way. We know that we won't agree on everything with you, and that's part of the fun. We'd love to hear back from you. You can tell us where you disagree. And if you become a part of this community, we might even share some of your thoughts.