The Eric Metaxas Show - Terry Mattingly

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

A friend of the program Terry Mattingly brings his perspective on the current state of journalism 

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. We'll get you from point A to point B. But if you're looking for point C, well, buddy, you're on your own. But if you'll wait right here in just about two minutes, the bus to point C will be coming right by.

And now here's your point C. your Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Matt, Texas. Folks, welcome back. It's my privilege right now to talk to an old friend Terry Maddingly. Terry, welcome back. Glad to be here. There's news. We've got to talk about the state of journalism and getreligion.org. Was it dot org?

I can't remember. It was dot org. Yeah, it was dot org. Getreligion. dot org, which you oversaw for what, 20 years? I don't know. 20 years. We signed off on our 20th anniversary. Okay. 20 years is no longer. Getreligion.org is no longer. Get religion. Tell my audience what was in case they haven't heard you on the program before. What is getreligion.org.

What was getreligion.org? Well, that was an effort by an amazing parade of journalists. of some names that people would know is the great Richard Osling, who for years, you know, covered Religion for Time magazine, wrote numerous cover stories, wrote for the Associated Press, all the way over to someone like Molly Ziegler Hemingway, who was an unknown writer, you know, for Gannett, the Military Times when we ran into each other in Washington, D.C.,

and she started writing for us and a host of other fantastic writers as well. I think there's about 15 million words in the getreligion.org archive, which, by the way, does remain online. We've improved the search engine for that who want to do research on topics. But explain to my audience who isn't aware of what getreligion.org was. Otherwise, I hate it when I do that. Okay. Yeah, understood. Our goal was to dissect why the mainstream press just does.

doesn't get religion in so many cases. And that can range from simple errors. Like the other day, CNN said that Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine represent the body of Jesus Christ. Now, can you imagine? See, like, you don't say this because you're so nice, but I just want to say, ladies and gentlemen, they're that dumb. They're that dumb. These are journalists responsible for facts and they don't know one of the one of the biggest facts in the last two thousand years is that the roman catholic church does not believe that the bread body symbolize anything so but this is where we are terry it's why getreligion dot org is so important was so important is still important but why your work is important because the the the media has become

increasingly secular and increasingly ignorant of what is important to most Americans faith. It's an astonishing thing, and you've been chronicling it over the years, and getreligion.org, you said it was 20 years that you did it. Why does get, why did it go offline and what are you doing now? That's a lot of questions right there. Before I get to that, I want to give you one more, you know, coffee spewing moment. The last piece I wrote for Get Religion opened with my all-time favorite, and it was a New York Times piece, which luckily someone screensaved the original so that, you know, that it couldn't be quietly vanished. And it was a piece about the Holy Sepulchre, Church of the Holy Sepulchre in what, in Jerusalem. And it's said, I know what's coming. I know what's

coming. I was, it was in my mind. I was going to bring it up. is unbelievable. This is, this is pretty good. Okay, go ahead. It's the church where many Christians believe Jesus is buried. I mean, I'm even laughing now, having heard it for the hundredth time, where many Christians believe Jesus is buried. That whole complicated Easter thing. Is it possible that there are any Christians who have ever lived that believe Jesus did not rise from the dead? are there, can you be a Christian? I believe that. Maybe not, but exactly why we're talking.

The New York Times is unaware of this distinction, that to believe Jesus rose from the dead is at the very heart of what it is to be Christian. Well, New Times missed that. Yeah. And but here's a point that's linked to that. And I have a couple of kind of final takeaways from get religion, because I knew you would ask that, because it's this perfectly valid question. I think the key. is post Roe v. Wade, the more religion came to be viewed as politics only, the worse the coverage got. And basically, the higher in the journalism food chain you go, especially when you're on

political desks, the more politics is the only thing that's real. And religion is thus, not so real. Right? I mean, it's not really real. Doctrine doesn't really matter. people believe really doesn't matter. Claims of the miraculous are not things that you could get a really interesting debate with people showing evidence for them as well, I know you've written a book on that. But you know what I'm talking about? Religion things can be really complex and why not just jump to politics? I will stress that one of the things we said for 20 years is the people who cover religion full time. I can argue with them. I can debate with them. But, But professional religion writers, and may their tribe increase, are way better than the political

desk when it comes time to cover religion. The question here, though, is why don't more people who run newsrooms hire more qualified religion writers? And that's the question I've been beating my head on that wall for 40 years. I think I can answer that pretty easily because they are secular materialists. They are not objective journalists. They have a dog in the fight, and they don't care. They don't care.

They dismiss people of faith in the way that scientific materialists and atheists dismiss faith claims. They're not interested. They see it as the world of fantasy. They think that they live in a world of facts. I mean, you've sort of said it a few minutes ago. It is an abrogation. It's a dereliction of duty. It's their duty to cover things.

and they are picking and choosing, and they, they, they, they, they kind of sniff at, uh, religion as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as though it's not fact-based. Uh, look, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's funny. Uh, what, what you over the years chronicled, uh, the goofs, flub-ups, uh, of, of the so-called journalistic establishment, it's just, it's just staggering. The level of ignorance is staggering. It's funny and it's horrifying. but what is it that made get religion cease to be recently, and what are you up to now? Yeah.

Basically, I wrote a huge piece about this for the Acton Institute in their journal, Religion and Liberty. Basically, the Internet changed the business model for journalism. And we've seen this in a couple of incredible articles that have been written in the last year or two about life inside the New York Times. And the essential writer there is very Weiss, who runs the free press, which is a go-to website if you're interested in, well, I mean, for example,

the current NPR story that broke out there. You know, it's must-reading. I would say that the free press is old liberalism. You know, free debates, First Amendment, argue, treat each other with respect, do your best. I would say that's the old liberalism. The new liberalism, I don't know what to call it anymore. Illiberal is one word. A couple of years ago, a Marxist. Well, that's one narrow angle, but a Muslim human rights acutist that I talked to a couple of

years ago about this. What are you calling these people now? And he said, I'm starting to use the word Jacobin. Well, that's the same thing. It's so radical leftists that you have to go to the French Revolution or to cultural Marxism. I mean, these are people that they don't believe in the foundational principles of the United States of America. They've gone off the grid into another world.

And so you can't, they don't even seem to be, and this is not just the world of journalism, but they don't even seem to care about objectivity. You know what? We're going to go to a break. When we come back, we're going to talk more with our friend Terry Mattingly about journalism and the state of culture. Don't go away.

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We're talking to our friend Terry Mattingly. Getreligion.org was where he was for 20 years. Terry, you've moved on. Before we get into that, I want to go back to this concept of objectivity. The New York Times in, I guess, 2016, they jumped the proverbial shark when they just said, you know, Trump is evil and we need to make sure that we don't allow Adolf Hitler. I mean Donald Trump to gain any advantage. So even if it means we no longer do objective journalism, we are somehow. in a war and we have become partisans and we're okay with that. At that moment, when the so-called paper of record, the New York Times, goes in that direction, they had always been left leaning. But that was a rubicon. That was a moment for journalism in the United States of America and we are

here now eight years later. The key to me, and I mentioned this in, I covered that in several other case studies in the piece I wrote for Acton. A woman named Liz Speyad was the Reader's Representative for the New York Times in 2016. A Liberals, Liberal, I mean, tenured faculty member at Columbia, the whole bit. Her reaction to what you're talking about, I think, was a key moment in my life as a journalist. Liz Speyad said, whatever you think of Donald Trump, we're ignoring half the United States. In other words, are you willing to admit that you're not interested in covering the life, the views, and the beliefs of half of the nation or more?

And of course, the New York Times fired her. Well, isn't the point is that they are, they're proud to be repulsed by that half of America. To them, it's a badge of honor to be repulsed by those people who would support Donald Trump. As far as they're concerned, it is a virtue to sneer at them and to do anything they can to avoid giving the point of view of such people any airtime or any column inches. Well, here's the key in my essay. Objectivity, attempting to do fair, accurate, respectful coverage anymore is no longer a good business model. With big tech, sucking. up like 70 to 80% of the advertising dollars online, basically journalists are now forced to preach to

the choir in order to make sure people keep buying the product. And that's been very good for like the New York Times from a monetary's perspective. Barry Weiss's classic line is that Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times, but it is now the editor of the New York Times. Now, of course, She said that before evil incarnate Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X, and that now is anathema. But you get my point. When you are totally beholden to the yells and screams of outrage from your readers, that's not a business model that will work in most towns, cities, and regions of the United States. And thus, journalism, I would say, is at peril right now by this entire preaching to the choir model, which is the only way to stay in business. So that's what that essay was about. And I decided to get religion really couldn't continue to defend fair, accurate, balanced, respectable journalism if the business model had changed and basically killed that. That was a tragic thing to have to say.

Well, there's no doubt about it. What are you doing now? Well, I've gone back. I've had a flashback in my life, and I've decided that whatever time God gives me, I'm going to devote now to trying to get the church to realize just how powerful the mass media is in their life. And all the way down to this wave of important books that are coming out right now from Jonathan Haight and others about smartphone addictions, you know, the work of Abigail Shreyer on topics related to the way we take a therapeutic approach to everything in life and video game addiction and a host of other subjects. And I've named, and you'll catch this

from your Orthodox background, the name of the new website is Rational Sheep. And that's from the baptismal Covenant. And we, thy Rational Sheep, will follow you. You know, we are to be sheep of the shepherd. But at the same time, the church describes as rational or the Greek is reason endowed. And the opening essay at my new website, I said, let's just presume that these are sheep who can communicate and use handheld devices. You know, that's the world we live in. And it's, and whatever the church does, it can't ignore the role that digital media is playing in our world. The post I just put up today is about the coming wave of internet and AI pornography and how the church has struggled to deal with regular pornography.

We're going to be ready for artificial intelligence pornography. But that's just a typical issue that we need to face. And so what is the new website or is it just a substack? It's a substack. And the name, you can search for it just with Terry Mattingly or just search for rational sheep. And it'll come right up. We're about a month and a half into the project. And thanks for letting me mention it here. And I hope many listeners will check that out. There's a lot of things that we can argue about and debate over a good strong cup of tea. But to me, the whole idea that

our churches are afraid to discuss the role of mass media in our lives is a tragic reality. and 30 years ago, working with the late great Haddon Robinson at Denver Seminary, more than, more like 34 years ago, we tried to have the only required class in American seminary where future pastors had to look at the power of mass media in our lives. And that project failed. Today, I still cannot find a single required class in an American seminary. where our pastors, counselors, youth leaders, whatever, have to look at the impact of mass media and popular culture on America. Well, the fact that it falls to atheists like Jonathan Haidt to talk about the pernicious influence of phones on children. I mean, this is reality. This is not really, it's not a religious issue.

It's not a theological issue. It's a reality issue. And the fact is that the mass media, I mean, I wrote about this years ago that, you know, in the, in previous decades, way back, we were formed by our communities more than anything else. But with the rise of media, first radio, then TV, and on and on now into the Internet age, as the media has risen in influence, we no longer have local influence. It's coming from wherever the media is coming from.

And those places tend to be secular and liberal. We find it coming from places mostly like New York or Hollywood that don't have the same shared values that most people in middle America have. And it's had a tremendous influence now more than ever. So it's interesting that you talk about that. Another book I would recommend if people are interested on that. This is in a stack of books I'm trying to get through right now. Tim Carney has a book out called Family Unfriendly that deals with this and a host of other issues in American life

that stress that corporate-wise and in a host of other ways, politically, media-wise, America seems structured now to be as unfriendly to families as possible. That's another book I would suggest to people who are interested in this topic. What's it called again? Family unfriendly. And Tim Carney is the editorial, page editor at the Washington Examiner, or at least he's a columnist there now. It's stunning to me what's happened to journalism in America, Terry. I really feel like there is

very little journalism. I'm horrified, actually, at what's happened. And I guess, but I do expect more of places like the New York Times and the Washington Post. For them really, it's It's not just about a business model. It was kind of a sacred institution. It's horrifying to me that they, I mean, I wouldn't ever read either of those papers anymore because they have just clearly gone over to the dark side. They don't care about objective in journalism in the old school. Well, to some degree, it's like, I believe Roder has made this point over.

It's kind of like Pravda. If you were in the All-Soviet Union, you had to read Pravda to know what you were debating. and to some degree that's what the New York Times, that's the function it plays. Kind of like national public radio for far too many of our political leaders, both left and right. It's the first button on their radio, and they're not listening to anybody else. I do think we can use Twitter and other ways to point people toward the truly fascinating journalism projects that are going to increase as well. and the free press would be an example of something like that. And I hope more people, if we can't have objective, fact-based journalism,

I'm at least hoping for respect, and we might have some media forums come along that allow people on both sides of issues to tell their stories, point to information, and have debates. I don't know how you have a republic without debate. And that's the scary part of all this. I have to leave it there. Terry Mattingly, thank you. Thank you for your time. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And when I say only, trust me, they're the only one. Glenn and the team have been great supporters of this show, which is why I am proud to partner with them. Patriot Mobile offers dependable nationwide coverage, giving you the ability to access all three major networks, which means you get the same coverage you've been accustomed to without funding the left.

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Again, Nutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X.com. Nutrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. Hey, folks, welcome back. It's my privilege now to speak to Chris Stagall, who's the Vice President of Communications for the Herzog Foundation. You're going to be learning about them today and in the future on this program. Chris, welcome. Eric, it's a real pleasure.

Great to see you. We saw you in Nashville at NRB a couple of weeks. weeks or I guess last month, so good to see you again. I get around. I get excited when I hear about folks like the Herzog Foundation, so I thought it would be valuable if you could explain to my audience who the Herzog Foundation is and what they're up to. Be thrilled to. Our founder, Stan Herzog, who we lost back in 2016, left his entire fortune to the idea of growing and advancing Christian education coast to coast that was his passion and so the Herzog Foundation was formed to do just that catalyzed Christian education K through 12 wherever it

can be spread we offer teacher trainings board trainings any host of fundraising trainings and we do that all free of charge for people all over the country we do about a hundred of these a year all around the country in addition to that we offer media like podcasts for parents that are thinking of making the leap that's a podcast I host with my wife where we talk about leaving public schools and jumping into Christian school for the first time. We offer programming for homeschoolers and people that are thinking about homeschooling for the first time with our training program called schoolbox at Herzog.com, or Herzog Foundation.com, I should say. So a lot of great resources for parents that are thinking

of jumping out of the public school setting and making a new way for their kids. Well, I have had many people on this program talking about what you're talking about because I'm a great proponent of leaving the public school system, being homeschooling your kids or finding a wonderful Christian school. They're not all wonderful. Finding a truly Christian Christian school, classical Christian school and sending your kids there. You want to talk about the ACLU case because that was in my notes and looked interesting to me. It's one of the stories that we've covered at readlion.com.

And I'd encourage your audience if they're interested in stories like these on faith and culture and so much more. I think they'll really enjoy the news site, readline.com. This story is out of Michigan where the ACLU is actually going after the, excuse me, this is out of Montana. Have I got my states confused? Montana or Michigan? Yeah, it's Montana. That's right. This is the Montana case. I'm sorry because I also had Michigan on my mind.

In Montana, my apologies. This is an attempt to basically force schools to keep secrets. The simplest way to explain it is the Montana public school board, if you will, had voted. The governor signed into law the idea that parents could opt their kids out of certain curriculum, certain lessons, and certainly couldn't keep secrets, like gender, sexuality, or other subjects like that, from their parents, from the parents of the student.

And the ACLU has issue with that. They somehow seem to think that that constricts teachers or students' rights somehow to keep. The way I interpret it is keeping secrets from the parents at home. It seems like consistently that's what we're talking about this, Chris. This is what's so staggering, the idea that these elites would dare, would dare to say, we know better for your children, for your children, for your. children than you do, parents. This is satanic. This is Marxist. This is what communists have done. It has come home to, it's come to America. It's come to Montana. We can talk about the Michigan case in a minute,

but this is an amazing thing and that the ACLU is now advocating against parents and parental rights. That's really what it boils down to. And it's just amazing. And so I'm glad that you guys at the Hurtzuck Foundation are on top of this, but it is amazing. So tell us more about this Montana case. Yeah, it's, it is that emotion. I'm sorry. Yeah, Eric, it's the thing that's so stunning about it, as you will understand, there's this notion that kids and teachers can now form an alliance to keep secrets and keep information private from parents and that the parents are in effect the villain here, that there's something kids can learn at school from their public school teachers that they can't learn at home, or the parents are the ogres because they want to be involved

in this gender transition business. We find this over and over all over the country. These schools that are saying, you want to talk about changing your gender, we'll keep that secret here, we'll shield you and shelter you here. We even had a case a couple of stories ago that we covered a couple of weeks ago that a teacher took a kid out of a public school in Southern Missouri went clothes shopping for their new gender. And that particular teacher lost their job over that. So this is a real commitment, Eric, a commitment, I mean, almost a religious sect, to get into public education and convince kids that the parent at home is the enemy,

the teacher is now your best friend and advocate. If a teacher had done that with my kid, I don't know what I would have done, but I am amazed. I'm amazed that they would dare, that they would dare to do such a thing that this is going on all across this country. Folks, again, if you're not in this fight somehow, if you don't care about this, you understand this is affecting all kinds of people everywhere in this nation. We basically have communists trying to take over this country, trying to do what communists do in absolutely. every time they divide families, parents from their children. You see this over and over and over again.

It's amazing. And Eric, if I may, I would just say the good news about it is the development of micro schools, the homeschool growth, what they call pod schools, and certainly Christians. Hang on one second. We've just got to go to a hard break here. Oh, sure. Much more. We're talking to Chris Stagall. This is very important.

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Go to satemnow.com. Salem now.com. Hey, folks, I'm talking to Chris Stagall. He is with the Herzog Foundation. Chris, keep going. It just, it's amazing to me. You know, when we really hear these stories of what's happening in this country, it has to wake people up.

If you don't care about this, folks, I don't know, you know, what you care about. This strikes at the very heart of what we've always believed in America, that the family is sacred, that parents have the right, the duty from God to raise their kids and that the state has no business interfering. And yet we're hearing that we're in a battle. So, Chris, keep going. Yeah, the good news is, as I was saying before the break, that school choice is growing across the country. As you know, 12 states have universal school choice. And the biggest growth of alternative education for our kids, believe it or not, is found in homeschoolers in New York, in the New York City area. That's where the most explosive homeschooling growth is going on in the country.

It should probably come as no surprise. Parents are not particularly happy with New York public education. But this is growing. And there are so many choices now, Eric, and that's what the foundation is geared toward, is telling parents and families and teachers, you can homeschool. You can form Christian schools, small Christian schools, one-room schoolhouses, if you will, pod schools. And, of course, they're big, well-established, private Christian schools out there doing it great, too. But there are too many alternatives to turn our kids over to the madness of today, Eric. And that's why the foundation, the Herzog Foundation, exists.

So where can people go if they want to find out more about the Herzog Foundation, or should they simply go to reedlion.com? Readline.com is our news website for all the cultural news of the day. Stories like we just heard out of Montana. But if you'd like to learn more about how to grow your own school or maybe learn how to homeschool or if you're already an established Christian school and you'd like to get more advanced training, we offer all of those for free and you can go to Herzog Foundation.com to learn all about those things. I'm amazed honestly how many, you always get this, that the most qualified people to be homeschoolers, to homeschoolers, to homeschool their kids say, oh, I'm not.

not qualified, which makes me laugh in their face. If you're not a Marxist, if you love your kids, you're qualified. There's unbelievable resources. And I want to encourage people who are listening to this right now. If you're on the fence, if you're thinking about this, you really ought to do it. When people say to me, they read my book letter to the American Church and they say, okay, what can I do? This is one of the main things that you can do. Homeschool your kids or work with a homeschool consortium, work with a Christian school. This is really important. This is one of the things that we can do. And things have gotten so bad that now we have to do it. Can you talk a little bit about the Michigan case? Because you mentioned it earlier. Yeah, this is another wild one where

charter schools, you know, which is not really our focus at the foundation, but charter schools have been a really viable option to the public school model for a while. And oversimplifying the the way they work is, yes, it's public school dollars, but these charter schools can become more specialized enclaves for students to leave a failing school district and join a publicly funded charter school that maybe more is tailored to their needs, be they special needs or artistic needs or whatever they may be. Well, the Michigan State School Board has decided they don't like the existence of these independently operated without the oversight of the, of the rest of the public school governing body of the state.

And so they've decided to try to move in on the charter schools and force them to govern themselves exactly the same way as the rest of the state's public schools. Of course, the charters say, well, we exist to be independent of the public schools. Kids are moving and coming to us to be independent of the public schools. You just want to make us part of your fold.

What we're finding over and over again, whether it's Christian school or charter school, public schools and public school, teachers union in particular, they are obviously the biggest obstacles to growth and expansion of private education for kids in our country. They don't want to see it. They want that uniformity. They want that model that you so eloquently spoke of. All of us. They are Marxists. They're radical Marxists and leftists. It didn't used to be the case, folks. And this is where we have to get wise. It didn't used to be the case. But it is now. You know, it's not 1965. It's not 1975. We're in a

world where leftists have taken over the reins of power, wherever they could. They don't care about the founding principles of this nation. They don't care about what the Bible teaches. They are hostile to it, and they're using their power. And if you don't get in the fight against them, if you can, where you are, you're allowing it to happen. We've allowed it to happen. It's why we are in this mess, because Christians have been too nice. They've all bought the lie that we're not supposed to get involved. We're supposed to just do church. No, you're supposed to live out your faith. And this is one of the most important places where you can live out your faith. I've had Sam Sorbo on this program many times talking about homeschooling. And she says the same thing that, you know, everybody can do this. But a lot of people think, well, I'm not qualified to do this. Folks, I'll tell you, you're qualified. And it's very important. Now, if folks go to the website, Chris, Herzog Foundation.com. What will they find there? I'm so glad you brought up our mutual friend, Sam Sorbo. We're proud to announce that just a couple of months ago, we partnered with Sam,

and we bring her show to her audience and our audience as part of the Herzog Foundation podcast network. So we have several podcast offerings now on homeschooling and transitioning into Christian school. And of course, Sam's unique style of advocacy for parents, there's probably no better messenger for homeschooling and that, yes, you can do it than Sam's podcast. So you'll find those resources, media resources. You'll find readlion.com is a great news site for your daily consumption. But most of all, if you want to get into homeschooling or you maybe even want to start your own Christian school in your community, we have what we call the school box.

It's an eight-step checklist to walk you through the process of here's how you begin to start to homeschool or here's the process of beginning a Christian school. school. We try to make it as easy and straightforward as we can. And if in fact you're already an established teacher or an established Christian school, we welcome you to our trainings either here at our foundation headquarters or we host them across the country. We'll be offering a brand new training in the Chicagoland area coming soon that will encourage public school teachers to make the leap into Christian education. That's an interesting new feature that we're focused on here at the Foundation. So a lot of great things are at HerzogFoundation.com, Eric. I'm very excited about it.

And it's just good to get to know you. We'll have you back. Herzog Foundation.com or, folks, you can go to readlion.com. HurtzocFoundation.com and readlion.com. Chris DeGal, thank you so much. God bless you, Eric. It's a real pleasure. Thanks for your friendship. Hey there, folks. I'm talking about my new book. I'm excited. I got a copy of the mail yesterday. Religionless Christianity, God's Answer to Evil. And I want to say, say there's a number of things I write about in here that are, I have to say, I think that it's going to surprise some people. And one of the things I write about is the Tower of Babel, or the Tower of Babel. And I talk about how all religion, in the negative sense,

is a satanic project to supplant God, right? So we know that Jesus actually came to end religion. Religion is the effort to, if I do this and this and this and this, somehow I can, you know, solve the problem of evil. And Jesus came to say, you can never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever solve the problem of evil. Only I, God can solve the problem of evil. And then by faith in me and by faith in what I have done to solve the problem of evil, then you can participate in standing against evil. but if you try to do it on your own. What about, you know, we all have the power within, man. Yeah, man.

We're all gods, man. So that, okay, so. We have the divine inside of us all, man. Yeah, man. So that's the point. So that was kind of babble, right? Satan in the garden says to Adam and Eve, like, yeah, listen, I got an idea. And it's always the devil's idea.

By the way, it's kind of like listening to the white witch and Narnia. She's going to say, hey, I'm going to make you my, you know, prince consort or whatever it is. like, nah, not going to happen. That's what the devil is saying to Adam and Eve. Like, you know, just do, you know, if you do this and, you know, it'll be, it'll be good for us. So the devil is always trying to supplant God. And the Tower of Babel is an example of religion in the sense that all of humanity unites to create this tower to reach into the heavens. And there's more to it. But it's this concept of we can breach this, the distance between us and heaven on our own. And

What Satan wants to do, of course, and the scriptures talk about this, and I quote it in the book, but he wants to go into heaven and murder God and take God's place. And so dead religion, the effort to kind of join Satan in this and somehow deal with evil, it's this utopian scheme that you see in all these communist revolutions. It's anti-God, basically. And so that's really what dead religion is. It's this way of somehow, it's kind of like saying I want to get to. you know, Easter Sunday, but not through the cross. And so that's ultimately what dead religion

ends up being. I mean, there's a lot more to it. You're going to have to read the book. But it is, it's interesting because even Christians through history and now are tempted toward these false solutions, which I would say is dead religion. Either you give your heart utterly to Jesus and say, I am dead to self and a lie. in you and lead me and guide me in being part of the solution that you want to bring, or I'm trying to do it on my own. And that's what utopianist secular schemes are. So when you're talking about, you know, the new world order, you're talking about the globalist ideas of, you know, what we can do. All these things are at war with God, but often not openly. What about eating kale,

man? Yeah, eating kale. Well, it's interesting. That's kind of funny because there's a lot of good things you can do as long as you don't make an idol of it. And actually in the book, I'll just close here because we're at a time, but I was going to say I mentioned a lot of religious idols, things that Christians do that are in fact, you're worshiping religious idols without knowing it. And I try to make clear in the book because Bonhofer did this. He made it clear that these are religious idols. We need religion-less Christianity. We need real Christianity. And Christians are tempted along. the lines of dead religion, and we need to be aware of what that is. And so in the book, I mentioned a number of idols.

In another segment, maybe with Albin, I'll go through what the religious idols are. In the meantime, please pre-order religionless Christianity God's Answer to Evil by Eric Metaxus. Thank you.