Theology in the Raw - Politics, Tariffs, and How Christians Should Respond to our Political Moment: Skye Jethani

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Skye Jethani is an award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast. Skye has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. His voice has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. To listen to the final 25 min of this episode, where Skye and I debate the question "should Christians vote," go over to patreon.com/theologyintheraw.com to become a member, where you can access this convo and other premium content.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Skye Gittani, who is an award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post podcast. Skye has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. His voice has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post. We had a fascinating conversation, always appreciate the thoughtfulness of Skye. fascinating conversation, always appreciate the thoughtfulness of Skye. And we were moving along pretty well in our discussion, but then we started to wander into an area of political theology where I found out that Skye and I have some disagreements about the very concept of being in exile in Babylon. So that took us, gosh, about 20 minutes to unpack. And then Sky decides to

ask me if I encourage people to vote. And I said, no. And he was a bit flabbergasted by that. And so that took us another 25 minutes to unpack the whole issue of Christians and voting. That last portion about Christians and voting in my response in particular, and his disagreement with my response and my disagreement with his disagreement and our ensuing conversation. I'm going to make that available to my Patreon supporters. So if you want the full length of this episode, then go to patreon.com forward slash theology draw, become a patron supporter for, uh, for, uh, as little as five bucks a month and get access to our, uh, interesting dialogue about voting. Okay.

Please welcome back to the show for the second time. Do you want to link sky's your time? All right. Sky's Tony. Good to see you again. It's been a minute. I think you were on the podcast maybe like three or four years ago. I have no idea. I scratched it from my memory, scrubbed it. Well, it's fun talking to a fellow podcaster. I think our audiences overlap quite a bit.

I get comments all the time saying, they found me through you guys or vice versa. And anyway, it's good to talk to you. You have another book. Is it officially out yet? Yeah, it is. Okay. What's the title again? Okay. So, this is the fifth book in a series I've been doing. It's called What If Jesus Was Serious About Justice. So, there's been a whole series of What If Jesus Was Serious books. The format of these books is interesting because they're short chapters, two, three, four pages max and every chapter has a doodle that I've done, a drawing that illustrates the idea

behind it. Obviously, this one's about justice. So I've tried to take theology and biblical ideas and make them very, very accessible. So short readings, visual doodles to illustrate it. And it's, this has been my series, has been my way of getting people engaged in meaningful theological concepts in a way that doesn't feel intimidating.

So this one on justice is the last in a five book series now. And I'm happy to move on to other things in the future, but for now I'm happy to talk about it. So you're writing to more of a lay or popular audience? Oh, totally. Yeah. I hear from people all the time that they use these books in youth groups and with their teenagers and in their family devotions. But anybody... I have 70-year-olds who've been in the church their whole life reading these books who are like, thank you, you've explained something to me I never really understood. The last book was about heaven,

the kingdom of heaven and all that. And a lot of these are my attempts to correct bad popular theology, which there's no shortage of. And in this case, we talk about justice and just the Old Testament, the New Testament. There's a lot on judgment and wrath and even hell in this book, trying to get people to understand it from a biblical point of view, not just accept the cliches and pop theology that they've inherited. Yeah, you said you talk about hell. I want to definitely make sure, I want to come back to that because that's, yeah, I would love to hear what you have to say about that. But so, Justice, what is the bad popular theology, or I guess, you're seeking to correct in this? Well, there's a number of them. In the introduction of the book, I talk about

Glenn Beck. If you remember Glenn Beck famously when he had his show on Fox News, this is during the Obama administration. He said, if you go to a church that talks about justice, run as fast as you can. And I think there's some segment of the American church that feels like, oh, no, no, no, all this justice talk, that's all liberalism, that's extra biblical, it's not part of our faith, it's just, it's communism or socialism and another guy's and it's using the Bible. And so there's that bad idea that this has no bearing on or no roots in scripture whatsoever, which is insane when you consider how much the Bible has to say about justice. And then the other side is to define justice as we've inherited it from our culture, be that a Marxist definition of justice or an economic definition of justice or

a secular definition of justice, which may have some element of truth to it, but they also try to divorce it from what does the scriptures say is justice. So I'm trying to correct both of those errors on the right and on the left and say, okay, let's go back to what Jesus said, let's go back to what he cited from the Hebrew Bible about justice and why we can't just abandon this idea because of the cultural and political whirlwinds that we're in right now. So, what would be a healthy biblical corrective to both the left and the right, the political left and political right, how political left and political right,

how they approach justice? Like, what is uniquely biblical about justice? Yeah. I mean, I start right in Genesis 1, this whole idea of God ordering creation, you know, separating the sky from the sea and the land from the water and putting everything in its proper place for flourishing. And you know this, you're a scholar, just the biblical ideal of shalom, of things being in place for the flourishing of everything and everyone, that proper ordering of things is justice. And a lot of times people don't have any problem with throwing around the word righteousness because that seems awfully Christian and biblical and that's a religious kind of spiritual word. But it's essentially the same word in Hebrew and Greek as justice.

So when we talk about being righteous, we talk about a right relationship toward God or a right relationship with one another. That's what justice is. It's putting things in their proper order in the right relationship as God intended so that things might flourish. And when they are out of proper order, out of proper relationship, then there needs to be restitution, there needs to be restoration, there needs to be redemption, all those things that put things back in place.

And you could argue that's the entire narrative of the Bible. It's God putting things in a proper order, the order being broken and screwed up by all kinds of forces, and then God working through Jesus to put them back into their proper order and then Him inviting us into that work as well. So that's more of the framework I'm coming from. And then each part of the book kind of looks at different aspects of it and how this applies to the church, how it applies in eternity, how it applies in our relationships with one another.

One of the big themes of the book, and it's deeply rooted in the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, but the law as well, is this idea that you can't separate a properly ordered relationship with God from a properly ordered relationship in community with the people around you. And we do that all the time, especially in American Christianity, that wants to make it hyper individualistic. We want a right relationship with God, but then we separate that from how we're treating the people around us. And Jesus doesn't do that, the prophets don't do that, it's never allowed anywhere in Scripture. So, the book is an attempt to help people see the holistic reality of this proper ordering that we need to embrace. That's good, that's good. And even like unity with creation, I mean, God reconciles all

things to Himself and you have a lot of creation-wide language, especially all over the place, but like in Ephesians and Colossians and Book of Revelation, you know, where God's salvation isn't limited to just individual humans, it is bringing goodness and justice to His whole creation, to set it right. Yeah. And you see that in the Gospels. Obviously, Jesus offers forgiveness to people in their reconciliation with God, but then He's calming storms and He's making sure there's an abundance of food and He's redeeming creation, broken bodies are healed. He's redeeming creation and putting it back in its proper order as much as he is calling people to live in proper relationship with God again. So, all of that reconciliation is part of what we have in Scripture, but for

different reasons and different communities, we isolate which ones we say really matter from the others. And I think that kind of piecemeal approach is unfaithful to what we've been revealed, what's been revealed in Scripture. Yeah. I wonder, so the people that are, the Christians that are kind of more, don't talk about justice, you know, that's just kind of liberal stuff, they will still talk about justice when it comes to like fighting abortion or combating DEI or, you know, like, so is it really that they are against justice or they just disagree on what is just and what is unjust? Well, I think that's a symptom of taking your cues first and foremost from your political allegiance

rather than your allegiance to Christ. And I mean, the left does that as well. So, that's, I would agree with you. I don't think they're against justice. I think they're just defining it based on partisanship rather than on Scripture. Okay. And I think a healthier, a more faithful approach would be to say, how does God define just ordering, right ordering of things? And then where that aligns with my political party, great. But where it doesn't align with my political party, great. But where it doesn't align with my political party, my allegiance is first and foremost to what's revealed in Scripture and in

the kingdom of God, not to one political party or the other. And that's a besetting problem in our society right now with Christians on all sides. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I agree with that. I do think that there is unique, I don't want to put it, I think any political tribal allegiance that is outpacing your allegiance to Jesus or competing with it is problematic for sure. It does seem that proportionately within the evangelical church in America, there is more of a problem with right-wing allegiance to left-wing allegiance, even though I would say both are problematic in kind, but in scope, it's much more of a problem on the right. Is that what you agree with?

Well, yeah, sure. I mean, when you zero in on the white evangelical church in America, we know 80 plus percent vote for the Republican Party. So in scale, yes, it's a bigger problem on the right. But I don't know if you've seen this in the circles you move in, Preston, but I have. I have seen people raised in the white evangelical subculture, aghast at what's happened over the last 10 years or so, rejecting that formation of their childhood or early adulthood, rejecting those evangelical communities that they had been a part of, and swinging hard to the left. And the irony is some of the folks that do that might abandon

their evangelical theology and roots and traditions and frameworks and all that, but they still carry the same way of operating to their new found home on the left. And that's not a solution. So I think that's the weird part I'm seeing here. So yeah, there are more by number on the right, but there's still this ailment that they carry with them even when they move over to the left. Yeah, it's the same spirit. It's almost like a fundamentalist spirit

that they bring with them and just fill it with new content. No, I see that all over the place. Especially in the circles. I do run in some like D-church circles, whatever. And I just, you know, the circles I run are just all across the spectrum, really. But yeah, the ones that are so focused on being anti everything they were taught, and they're evangelical upbringing, they just sometimes, it's just you're doing the same thing on the other side. And maybe this is, if we can just get raw, like, and maybe this is for you in particular than the holy posts in general. I think you guys get accused of being like punching right,

coddling left, or being too left wing or whatever. Like, is that an accusation you guys get and how would you respond to it? And maybe you just want to speak to yourself, not everybody associated with the Holy Post. Yeah. I mean, we are a growing group of voices, so it's not just me, but yes, we do get accused of that. The funny thing is it depends what audience you're looking at.

So if I were to get on social media right now and look at what criticism am I getting or the Holy Post getting, it's probably what you said. We're going to be accused of punching right and coddling to the left. When I go onto Holy Post Plus, which is our internal subscriber kind of audience, the people who pay to get all the material we produce, if there's criticism coming from that audience, it's more often that we're too hard on the left. Oh, interesting. Or that we're too hard on the left. Oh, interesting. Or that we're not left enough sometimes.

Yeah. I just, tomorrow as we're recording this, we have an episode coming out of the Holy Post where I interviewed Senator Gillibrand from New York. She's a Democrat from New York and we had a kind of tense conversation about does the Democratic party allow pro-life people a voice in their party? And I think people are going to listen to that episode on the left and are going to be upset with me because too many people assume that if you're critical of Trump, you must be in the tank for the left. And we are 100% not in the tank for the left. And I think one of the reasons we got

Donald Trump and MAGA is because the Democratic Party has kind of lost its mind in some ways and people felt like their only viable option was Trump and MAGA. So I want to see a healthy party on the left. I want to see a healthy party on the right in our country. And I don't think we have either right now. So yeah, we get it on both sides for different reasons and different issues. I mean, one of our stances is we believe in Orthodox Christianity.

And that includes the traditional view of marriage and things like that. And some people freak out at us for that. At the same time, we're not winning a culture war here. We're not trying to fight, like what is it? The Daily Wire says that their mission is to fight the left and win the culture or something like that. Like, that's their whole schtick. Like they say that out loud. That's so funny. I know. And I'm like, no, we're not interested in fighting the culture war. We're interested in more faithfully following Christ and helping others do that as well. And where the right is right, great. Where the left is right, great. Where they're both wrong, forget it. We're moving forward. And I think just because so much of the

communities we've come out of have bent the knee to MAGA, Christian nationalism, Trump, we're getting more criticism from that because those are the churches, denominations, and cultures that Phil and I came out of. But we're getting plenty of pushback on the left as well. Pete That's interesting. Yeah, for me, it comes in waves. I've gotten some people, yeah, I punch right, I coddle left, which is, if you understand my political theology, it just doesn't even make sense. But it's also people are selective. They're not taking the time to digest your work, which you say, long form, listen to

hours of what you talked about. They'll just take clips or sound bites that somebody who doesn't like you shared on social media. And I think that that captures the essence of your entire work. And I'm sure you get this too, Preston, but some people tune into a podcast or they buy a book or they come here, you speak somewhere. What they're really looking for is not growth or challenge or information. What they're looking for is validation.

I want to know that Preston Sprinkle agrees with me. They might listen to you for a while and they're like, oh yeah, Preston's great because I'm totally on track with everything he's saying. And then you do an episode on topic X, whatever it is, where you diverge from their view. And then suddenly it's, I'm so disappointed in you, Preston. And sometimes that just comes down to what candidate you support or don't support. And so my bestselling book is the one I wrote more than a decade ago, back in 2011 is with, and I'm grateful for the impact that book has had.

I get messages every week from people that are deeply impacted by that book. Occasionally I get a message like, you know, Sky, I read With back in whatever, 2015, or I read it in high school, I read it in college, changed my faith, changed my life. Then I found out that you're critical of Donald Trump. I'm so disappointed that this person I thought was a faithful guide for me and my faith turns out you're a heretic. And it's like, sorry to disappoint you. But that's what people are looking for.

They want to know that you are in lockstep with them on everything. And if something as important as your view of Christ is shared with them, they assume, well, then everything you believe must be the same as me. And that's just, that's ridiculous. That's unrealistic. I think you and I both agree. Like, that's not the kind of audience that I'm trying to read, you know. Because yeah, there are people, that's a very common thing for people, just confirmation

bias they want. It's a little bit of a ambitious, not arrogant assumption. Like, I already have all the truth and I'm going to find people that agree with me, but when they disagree with me, then they're wrong rather than, oh, maybe I need to be challenged by this or think through this. That's uncomfortable. Yeah. It's hard.

Especially if you've been listening to somebody or reading somebody for years and you respect them, and then suddenly you discover that they fundamentally disagree with you about something, that's painful. That's hard. That challenges us. It makes us rethink things and that's the cognitive dissonance that we just, we want to avoid. Yeah. And so, oh, it's too bad.

I got to write off Preston Sprinkle now. Yeah. Because, you know, his view of what transubstantiation doesn't match mine and whatever. Yeah, that's the issue. I do see that in the few times I look at comments and stuff. Yeah, that's not a... I've seen a number of those. Man, I used to love your podcast, but then because of this episode, I do two a week,

but because of one episode, they do two a week, but because of one episode, they didn't like what somebody said. And even then, half the time, it's like, I don't even think that's what they said, or that's not a good contextual reading of it. It's just like some trigger word came up, and it's just like the walls went up. But I feel like that, I mean, have things

gotten more polarized? It seems like it has, but I mean, I don't like, is that just, you say yeah? Oh yeah, for sure. People are hunkering down to the camps more than ever right now. Yeah. I mean, we could get into why that is. I mean, there's a big media piece of that. Social media is a big part of that.

Just the nature of our politics and our political leaders are part of that. But the other side of it is everything is now viewed through this lens of partisan politics. I mean, I'm sure you remember when we were kids, and I don't know, we're not that far apart in age, when we were kids, football was not political. And then Colin Kaepernick took a knee and suddenly football became like the epicenter for a couple of years there on what your politics were. And that seems like Oreos are now political and every music artist out there is political. And it's like you can't, it's hard to enjoy anything in our society anymore without it

coding blue or red. And that's a new phenomenon that didn't exist throughout most of American history, at least in our lifetimes. And now it's, yeah, so yes, things have definitely become more polarized for sure. Have you seen a, I think the answer to this is yes, but I'll just throw it out as a question. There has been a cultural resurgence to more conservatism. Yeah, let me throw that out as a genuine question. Has there been a resurgence towards conservatism in the last, let's just say the last election cycle?

I mean, Donald Trump was elected by a popular and electoral college vote, but that doesn't necessarily, I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Well, I would quibble with your category a little bit. I don't consider Donald Trump or MAGA conservative. I mean, it has some conservative things, but for the most part, I don't see it as conservative. I see it as populist.

Oh, okay. And yes, that's been a major resurgence. Now, it depends what level you wanna talk about. If you're talking about economic policy, No, it's not conservative at all if you want to talk about social policy even there I wouldn't necessarily call it conservative because I think rejecting freedom of speech rejecting the 13th 14th and 15th amendment is not conservative If you want to talk about traditionalists in the sense of racial segregation, the role of men and women in society, that kind of stuff, yeah, it's definitely taken a turn

in that direction. And there's a backlash to the so-called wokeness on the left and other things. And some of that I think was highly predictable and you could see it coming as soon as the George Floyd riots in 2020 got politicized, you knew this was coming. It's remarkable how quickly so many American corporations, I mean, the one that comes to mind is Disney, perhaps more than any other. In the summer of 2020, in the midst of all the backlash after George Floyd, Disney announced that they were going to change the theming on Splash

Mountain. Did you see this? No. Okay. So Splash Mountain is their water ride. It goes back to the 1980s or early 90s, both at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. And it's themed to an animated movie from, I forget, the 1940s called Song of the South with Brer Rabbit and it's ZDoo-Dah and all that.

Oh, yeah, I did hear about this, that's right. So that movie is profoundly racist. Yeah. And so in the summer of 2020, suddenly Disney decides, actually, we're going to shut down Splash Mountain, one of their most classic favorite rides. We're going to re-theme the whole thing to Princess and the Frog, which was their animated movie that has an African-American princess, basically.

And they re-did, they spent, ah, who knows how much money re-theming those rides. And most of the reviews I've read are people think it's not as good. But it was all in this cultural moment of inclusion and diversity and equity and all that sort of stuff. And so Disney jumped on that train. And now as we are in the second Trump administration and the Democrats have gotten, you know, they're handed to them in a couple of elections and there's cultural backlash against all this DEI stuff, Disney is rapidly trying to change their tune and moving away from so-called woke stuff because

they've been getting creamed by it, by Governor DeSantis and Trump and everyone else. So it's just remarkable how quickly these American corporations reveal that what they said was a conviction five years ago, suddenly Targit's doing the same thing. Targit unrolled this whole DEI initiative five years ago, and now they're backing off of it. Some African American leaders are boycotting Targit because it's clear that they're making these decisions not based on any kind of conviction, but what they think is good for their bottom line.

That's what they do. I think these movements are fairly predictable. One side will take it too far far and then there's a backlash. And I think now you're going to see the right is going to take their stuff too far and there will be a backlash. And the pendulum just keeps swinging and I don't know how you feel, but it gets nauseating. It does. Yeah.

I, from, you're way more in tune at this than I am, but that does seem right. Like when one side gets more and more extreme, it's going to produce a backlash that the majority of people aren't going to be into the extremes. I think biological males and female sports became kind of a tipping point. I mean, you had gay marriage legalized in 2015, and then a lot of trans rights stuff

followed in the wake of that. But then the majority of people are just not on board with biological males and female sports. So I think there's been some pullback on that. Or even like medical interventions for trans identifying teenagers. That's been another hot button issue. And yeah, that's interesting. So how long do you think this quote unquote anti-woke resurgence is going to go too far and get its own backlash?

I mean, do you have any? I think it's... This is part of what I wanted to talk with Senator Gillibrand about is I think it depends entirely on what the Democrats do here, at least in the political space. What I mean by that is when you read or watch all the postmortems that are going on right now among Democrats about what happened in 2024, this is an oversimplification, but generally they fall into two buckets. There are those who believe the problem in 24 was a messaging problem.

They just didn't do a good job of communicating what they stand for. The symbol of this became Donald Trump went on Joe Rogan's podcast and Kamala Harris didn't. Some people think we just need to get on podcasts. We just need to get out and communicate this stuff more effectively, reach people where they're at, but it's a messaging problem. Then there are those out there who are going, no, it's more than a messaging problem. There is a substantive policy problem on the left that we need to rethink. We've gone too far to the extreme in the activist left wing of the Democratic Party, and we need to get back closer to where the majority of Americans are.

I think it was something like over 85, 87% of Americans polled said that they don't think genetic men should be in women's sports. If that's where almost 90% of Americans are and the Democratic Party is not on board with that because of some of the views that they're... That's a problem and that's just one example. There's an internal conflict going on with the party going, are we really going to rethink some of our positions or do we just need to communicate better? And like Rahm Emanuel is a good example.

He's arguing no one's going to listen to your messaging on economics and the border if they think you're completely nuts on things like gender and children and education. So if the Democrats pull back from some of their more extreme views and more towards a little bit closer to where the majority of Americans are, then I think the backlash to the right will be quick and significant and there will be the sense that, you know what, the Democratic party is the more common sense party that isn't going to destroy the economy, that's going to secure the southern border while treating people with respect and giving them due process and all that.

But if they don't correct some of their positions closer to where the median American is, and they're still viewed as extremely out there on the far fringes of the left, then I don't think there's going to be a swift backlash to what is happening with MAGA and on the right because people feel like... I mean, just statistically, you can pick issue after issue after issue, gun rights, abortion, the border, immigration, taxation. When you poll most Americans, they actually have pretty common sense views on this stuff. It's the parties that don't, because they're beholden by their far right wing and their

far left wings, who are the people who vote in the primaries. And so they don't reflect what most Americans think. And most of us are sitting around, will there please be a party and a leader that steps up and goes, here's a common sense view on whatever the topic is? I think we're hungry for that. And neither party right now wants to provide that because all the money and attention and energy is on their far extremes. And I think people voted for Trump in 24 because they were worried about Biden and Harris.

They were worried about the economy. They didn't think things are going well. So they gave Donald Trump the keys and now he looks like he's crashing the car. But they're looking back, well, can I trust the Democrats again? I don't know if I can. And I think it's leading to a sense of nihilism and despair. So I think the Democrats are in the weird sense, the driver's seat here in repositioning their party to help Americans have a viable alternative. But if they don't choose to do it, I don't know what's going to happen. The ball's in their court. I mean, can they put out a halfway decent candidate?

I mean, you go from like Hillary, who's like, I don't know if the comedian Bill Burr, back in 2016, he's like, these are our choices? His words, a racist dope and the devil. Like who am I supposed to pick? And then Biden and they gaslit the entire population that he was mentally cognizant. Three weeks before that debate with Donald Trump, six months ago, eight, 10 months ago,

three weeks before, they were like, he's sharp as a tack. I don't know if you saw. Yeah. And every news outlet was like, he's sharp as a tack. Sharp as a, never seen such a mentally with it. And now all the stories are coming out about what was really going on. But then like those of us, not those of us, but people who were not just reading left wing media, they have an internet connection.

They can see all the videos that is shared by Elon Musk and people with billions of followers where Biden's stumbling around and falling over and doesn't know which way to get off this. It's like the debate with Donald Trump was, it went exactly how half the population thought it would. But then like the left freaks out like, oh, what happened? I guess maybe he's not mentally with it. Like, you kidding me?

Like, and then it like, so I think a lot of the gas, and then he put forward Kamala who in the, if I remember correctly, in the 2019 primaries of the eight candidates, she was the least popular. Like she was the worst. She got shellacked by Tulsi Gabbard. And so it's like, why would you take the least? Like how, I don't know.

Like, here's the thing. I agree with all of that. I think the Democrats screwed this up more specifically, Biden and his team screwed this up by not, he should have never run for a second term and they should have had an open primary and have a good candidate rise to the surface. I think all of that is... We put it there feet for sure. But here's the difference.

The Democratic Party is still a functional political party because when they did have that train wreck at the debate, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, other luminaries of the party, basically went to Biden and forced him out. Now, he coronated Kamala Harris to be the candidate. They didn't end up having an open primary and stuff, and that was another problem. But at least the party leaders got together and realized they had a problem.

The difference is, go back to 2016, and along comes Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And the Republican, I mean, he was not a conservative Republican in any way. And yet the party was powerless to stop him from taking over and getting the nomination. I think the statistic, I could be mistaken on this, but I think the statistic is only 17% of Republican primary voters voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Oh, wow. And yet he became the candidate. So there's an argument to be made here that the problem 15% of Republican primary voters voted for Donald Trump in 2016. And yet he became the candidate. So there's an argument to be made here that the problem facing both these parties, and I didn't expect this is where our conversation was going to go.

I didn't either. No, I'm not prepared. I think that some people want to say, well, the political parties are corrupt and they're a mess and they're pushing these terrible candidates on us. No, no, no, no. The problem isn't that our parties are too strong. The problem is our parties are too weak. We now have a system with the primary system since 1974 and with gerrymandered districts and on and on that a tiny percentage of primary voters are picking our presidential candidates. Interesting. And we actually had better candidates

in many regards when they were picked by party bosses back in smoke-filled rooms. That's what led to the riots in Chicago in 68 and the Democratic convention and on and on. But I don't want to overstate this, but I don't want 17% of voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada picking who the next president's going to be. We have a really messed up system that doesn't bring us the best candidates. So I haven't been thrilled with any of the candidates we've had in the last however many

years. And I think we need stronger political parties that actually have some pull to make sure that incompetent and unconstitutional figures like a Donald Trump or somebody who can't fulfill the office like Biden, that they don't get the nominations. That's what a strong party should do. And we've completely lost it. Did you know that only 3% of Christians who serve overseas actually go to unreached places? That means the other 97% are going to areas where the good news is readily available. ELIC wants to change this, and that's why they're sending and supporting hundreds of

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fundraise, then don't wait to take the next step. Head to ELIC.org forward slash TITR. That's ELIC.org forward slash TITR to learn more about how you can be a part of the 3% who are reaching the unreached. Who do you, okay, so next election four years from now, in your opinion, do you have a best possible candidate on each side? No, except I really don't.

Except I really hope Donald Trump doesn't try to run for a third term. And that's- Is that really the whole two term limit? Is that really gonna- This came up last week, Steve Bannon did an interview, one of Trump's advisors, and he flat out said he will be inaugurated as president in 2029 for a third term. He said, we have teams of people working on how to strategize to get that to happen right now.

I have no idea if we should take that seriously or not, but there's an awful lot that Donald Trump has been doing in this second term, unlike his first, that is just incredibly unconstitutional and autocratic. And so I don't... I thought he was disqualified for this term. Yeah. And that was my dilemma. And I talked about this on our show, like when it was between Biden and Trump. I think the floor for voting for a president is you believe that that person can actually fulfill the oath of office. Trump, I believe, floor for voting for a president is you believe that that person can actually fulfill the oath of office. Trump, I believe, had already violated the constitutional oath of office on January 6,

2021. Joe Biden, I believe, was mentally and physically incapable of fulfilling the oath of office given his age. We had two candidates, and I think it was pretty obvious, were unconstitutional candidates, and neither of our political parties stepped in and said, this can't happen. That's a big problem. So in my ideal scenario, I would like to see two candidates or more in 2028 who can actually fulfill their constitutional oath of office as president of the United States. So you think Democrats will put forward a more moderate, or at least they should put forward maybe a more moderate capable person who is going to be somewhat popular for-

I hope so. I mean, I don't want to get into a nitpicky thing about Kamala Harris, but I think on the surface, a California liberal of color who's a woman is a hard sell in this country. And the fact that at least Joe Biden, I don't know why he just coronated her to be the candidate when he stepped out, but I think that was a real long shot in a good election year for Democrats, let alone a really tough year. Because of her race and gender? I don't think race or gender would...

I don't think they were dispositive. Go back to 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. This country has proven that a majority of Americans will vote for a woman for president. You go back to 2008 and 2012, an African American man won the presidency twice. So I don't believe being a person of color or being a woman automatically means you can't be president in this country. They're not dispositive, but I don't think they helped. In other words, there are some people in this country who won't vote for a person of color,

and there are some people in this country who won't vote for a woman. So I think those were headwinds against Kamala Harris. Yeah, the opposite. You have people that will vote for her primarily because she is a female, a black female, right? Do they offset the ones who won't? It's hard to tell. So I don't think... We have proven we will vote for a woman for president, and we've proven we will vote for

a person of color for president. So I don't think you can say Kamala Harris lost because she's a woman or because she's a person of color. I don't think that's true. I do think though they were headwinds that pushed against her just as being black was a headwind for Barack Obama in some of his elections and being a woman was a headwind for Hillary Clinton. But I don't think any of them were decisive in the loss of the election. I think it was much more that the Biden administration was in bad shape. I think Kamala Harris was not a great candidate. I don't think she distanced herself from Joe Biden.

I think inflation was out of control. I think the southern border was a really powerful issue that they didn't have a great answer on. There were a lot of challenges they were up against, but those things didn't help. So what are they gonna do in 2028? I have no idea. I'm not saying they shouldn't run a woman. I'm not saying they shouldn't run a person of color.

I'm saying I think the party needs to have a long, hard look at itself and why the majority of America, I mean, the polling of the Democratic Party right now has never been lower. Wow. And that should tell you something. And they claim they're the party of the Democratic Party right now has never been lower. Wow. And that should tell you something. And they claim they're the party of the working class and that they're the party that represents average Americans' views and interests.

They're not. And so they need a candidate that can come in like Bill Clinton did in 92 and rebrand this thing. As Clinton came in and he's like, we're not the party of Jim Ricardo, we're not the party of LBJ, we're not the party of New Deal, FDR kind of Democrat. He rebranded it. And I'm not saying you do it exactly like he did in 92, but you need that kind of transformational figure to come into the Democratic Party and convince a majority of Americans that they're

not beholden to left-wing activists. And all these criticisms are for the Democrats because I actually have hope that that party can salvage itself. I'm not saying any of this about the Republicans because I don't think they can. I think that ship has sailed. So I don't want anyone to hear this going, Sky doesn't care at all about the Republican Party. I would love to see a healthy conservative party in this country. I just don't, I don't think the Republican Party could be salvaged after 2024.

It sounds like you're coming out this whole discussion. People could say, why are we so wrapped up in this? It seems like you think it's healthy for society to have a very strong conservative and liberal or say Democrat Republican Party so that they can compete with each other. Because if you just had one side dominated every time, that'd be disastrous. Hey, I live in a state that's dominated by one party and it's a disaster. And it's the Democrats in my state. So no, I think that when you look around the country, the healthiest states tend to be the purple ones that kind of oscillate a little bit back and forth between who's in the

governor's mansion and who has the legislature. It tends to be the ones thatate a little bit back and forth between who's in the governor's mansion and who has the legislature. It tends to be the ones that go a little bit back and forth between red and blue. The states that are overwhelmingly red or overwhelmingly blue, they have all kinds of weirdness going on there. Look at California and their inability to get most anything done and it's an entirely blue state. You look at Texas, their power grid keeps going down because they don't invest in infrastructure.

You know, and they're posting the 10 commandments in every public school classroom now, which I, as a Christian, I'm not a favor of. I think that's a violation of the First Amendment. So I think deeply red and deeply blue states tend to be broken right now. And it's the purple ones that are healthy. I would like to see a purple country. And demographically we are. Right. but it's not reflected in our parties. Right. Have you always been into politics?

Yeah. Partly because I studied history as an undergrad, history and comparative religion. And a lot of history is politics and understanding the dynamics of what's made the country what it is. And that's part of why I'm grieving where we are as a country because honestly, in a matter of three months, Donald Trump has dismantled the last 80 years of American economic and foreign policy. And it's just stunning to see what generation sacrificed to build, how quickly he has destroyed it. And I don't think that's coming back. Has he lost popularity among his own base?

A little bit, yeah. Recent polls are showing since all this terror of craziness has gone on in the last two weeks, he's lost about seven to 8% of public support, including, I mean, not in his diehard ultra MAGA folks, but that squishy middle, those people that voted back and forth for Biden or Trump in whichever election, like, yeah, they're seeing the impact. And he was elected to deal with inflation and bring down prices. It's not happening.

In fact, the tariffs are threatening to increase inflation and people are watching their 401Ks dry up and they're not happy about it. So yeah, he's losing support. I mean, if he doesn't, if the economy doesn't do very well under his presidency, that's the main reason why people vote for, well, not the only, but one big one is I think he'll be good for the economy. So if he does tank it, then he's done. Yeah. And that's actually the concern I have for the Democrats. There are some out there who are saying like James Carville is saying to his own party, don't do anything.

Just let Trump screw it up and people will come back and put the Democrats back in power. And if that's their posture, they're not going to do the reflection and introspection they need to do to maybe rethink some of their policies. I was a pastor. I counseled people in marriage problems and there were a number of couples that I counseled who, you know, they both thought the problem was the other person, right? And there were problems. Then they get divorced and they're no longer with that person and they still have all the same problems in their life that they had before. Now it's just complicated because of divorce. And that's when they finally have to go, oh, maybe all my problems in the world weren't my husband's fault or weren't my wife's fault. And I have to do, right now the Democrats have the luxury of going

everything that's broken is Trump's fault. So we don't have to do anything. And I know you really need to do, you gotta look at the log in your own eye, Democrats, and not just wait for Trump to screw this up and get back in power. Because then we're just gonna go back and forth, back and forth. And we need transformative leadership right now in this country and neither party is providing it. What if, Sky, I know you're probably not even gonna like this question, What if Trump is right about tariffs? What if the economy takes a little hit, inflation goes up, but then in the short run, it actually starts to boom the economy?

What if after four years, he was right and the economy is flourishing? I am no economist, but I have yet to find an economist that doesn't work for this administration that thinks this is a good idea. I was going to ask you that because I know nothing about tariffs. I didn't know what a tariff was until six months ago, so I have no opinion. Yeah. But it seems like there is a pretty widespread bipartisan disagreement with tariffs. Would that be correct?

Among people that know what they're talking about? Yes, I think so. And I know people might be surprised to hear me say this, given the conversation we've just had. Temperamentally and politically, I'm generally conservative. And what I mean by that, have you heard of Chesterton's fence? No.

Okay, so GK Chesterton had this way of describing the difference between progressives and conservatives. He says, imagine you're building a road through a field and you come across a fence. The progressive person says, this fence is in the way of our road that we're trying to build. Let's get rid of this fence and keep going. And the conservative goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. This fence was built for a reason.

Maybe we should stop and pause and figure out why this fence was put here before we just tear it down. After we know why the fence was put here, then we can make the determination. Yeah, we can get rid of it. It's no longer needed and keep going. Or it could be here for a really good reason and maybe we should divert our road rather than take down the fence. I think there's just wisdom in that.

So how does this apply to tariffs? This country turned away from significant tariffs in the 1930s because the smooth holly tariffs back then led to the Great Depression. There's a reason we got rid of tariffs and went towards income taxes to fund our government. An economist, when I look at the history, when I look at what free trade has brought to the world, when I look at what it's done for the wealth of America, our standard of living, when I look at what most economists are saying, they're all saying this fence that has been in place for 80 years, 90 years is really, really important.

When the only people saying, no, let's get rid of that fence and let's do tariffs again, the only people saying that are the president or people who work for the president, that's a big red flag to me. So, and I apply that Chesterton's fence thing to all kinds of issues, not just economic issues. I'm just hesitant to disregard inherited wisdom, whether it's a shorter term inherited wisdom, like 80 years of economic policy or the role of NATO since World War II, or it could be longer term fences and inherited wisdom like family structures and sexual mores and not messing with human genome, that kind of stuff. I'm inclined towards a more conservative view on all of that stuff because I think we make

really bad decisions when we don't know the context for which the things that preceded us were developed. That's what I see going on with this tariff stuff. I have yet to hear a really good argument from somebody that's willing to say the last 80 to 100 years of economic policy was really, really bad. Doesn't mean it was perfect, but I'm not hearing anyone say that we need to go back to the 19th century form of economics. Can you steel man the case for tariffs?

What is... Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a steel man case to be made for targeted tariffs for certain industries in certain sectors with certain trade partners. So an example would be, there's been a lot of talk for years now since the pandemic that the United States doesn't make enough semiconductors. We're too reliant on semiconductors coming from China and Taiwan. Okay, well during the Biden administration, they passed the CHIPS Act, which was to reinvigorate making semiconductors in the United States.

The reason being we need them for our own national defense and economic security because if we're too dependent on a foreign country for those, it risks shutting down the entire economy. All right. In that case, should we put a tariff on semiconductors coming from outside the United States? Maybe. Should we incentivize making those at home domestically? Probably. And there's other industries like that.

But those things should be targeted and surgical, not 140% tariff on everything coming out of China. That's not how you do this. Or, and here's the nutty part is Trump puts this 140% tariff on Chinese goods and then he gets a call from Tim Cook from Apple saying, hey, this is going to destroy Apple. Really? Yeah. The next day Trump goes, oh, well, we're going to make smartphones and computers exempt.

Why? Because Tim Cook is now a friend of Trump's and he was at the inauguration, Apple gave a donation to his inauguration. So how is economic policy being decided? Not based on any kind of strategic principle. It's who's kneeling to Donald Trump and making his ego feel inflated. That's not how you run a government. That's not how you run a global economy. That's how you run an oligarchy.

So I'm not against tariffs in every single situation, but they need to be smart, strategic, and targeted, not the way they're being done. So there is a steel man argument to be made, and there's also a steel man argument to be made for how do we reinvigorate American manufacturing. Now the other side of it is that there are more open manufacturing jobs in this country than people willing to take them. So this idea that you're going to open up a cell phone factory in America and Americans are going to be assembling cell phone, nobody wants those jobs.

I think it was Dave Chappelle who says, we want to wear Nikes, we don't want to make them. And so I think there's a case to be made for reinvigorating manufacturing in America, but they have to be the kind of manufacturing jobs that Americans actually want. And yeah, so there's steel man arguments to be made for terrorists, but not the way this administration is doing it. What about, and I've heard people say he's actually doing typical Donald Trump stuff. He's saying things to intimidate, to get people to cave in, but he's

not actually going to follow through on half these things. Is that the best way to put it? He'll threaten tariffs and then they're like, okay, okay, okay. And then now it goes down. But he, I don't know. Is that- The problem with that, I know people want to make the argument that he's playing four dimensional chess and he's playing four-dimensional chess and he's the smartest man in the world and nobody can understand what he's doing and we just need to go with it. I find the evidence for that to be severely lacking. But the problem with it is, and you've heard this from a bunch of people, business leaders

want stability. They want to be able to make predictions. When you're investing billions of dollars in a new factory, or you're going to hire thousands of people, or you're going to open up a new product line and launch a new market or whatever, you want some predictability on where the economy is going, what the taxes are going to be,

what the tariffs are going to be, whatever. So when every other week he's changing his tune, you could put so much insecurity and instability into the system that you stall the economy. And here's the best evidence for why what he's doing is supremely dumb. When there's economic volatility in the markets and people are looking for safety and stability, and I don't know how much you follow the stock market or investments or anything like that, but when there's a lot of volatility in the market, people go buy US treasury bonds. A US treasury bond is essentially giving your money, investing

your money in the United States government. Say I'm going to buy this bond and in five years, 10 years, 20 years, it's going to mature and I'm going to get this return on my investment because I'm buying debt from the United States and there's no more stable government in the world than the government of the United States. So it's safe. Apple can go up and down. Walmart can go up and down. Boeing can go into the crapper, but the US government, that's tried and true. I'm going to buy a US bond.

That's what happens when markets get volatile. When US bonds start to crash, it's a sign that people no longer trust the government because the government is showing so much instability and craziness that they're not confident they're going to get their money back if they invest in the US government. During this crazy convoluted thing with the tariffs, one of the reasons Trump put the 90 day freeze on it is because Jamie Dimon, head of, is it Citibank? I forget what bank he's a head of.

Anyway, number of big bankers called up Donald Trump and said, you're crashing the bond market because your people are losing faith in the government itself with your erratic behavior. That's why he put the freeze on the tariffs. So- Wait, wait, wait real quick. So he just recently put a freeze for 90 days? He put a 90 day freeze on all of his, well, all the tariffs except China. Oh, okay. So that tells you when people are losing faith in the government, something bad is happening. And there was another investment, the guy who started the largest private equity fund

in the world, he came out on NBC News on Sunday morning and said he's worried about something worse than a recession. That's how crazy and unstable things are. So if Donald Trump is playing four dimensional chess, it's more like he's playing Russian roulette with the economy. And you saw the stock market. The moment he put the 90-day freeze on the tariffs, the stock market had its largest surge since 2001.

It's a bit like saying Donald Trump was holding a gun to the head of the economy and he decided to shoot it in the kneecap instead of the head. People were so excited that the stock market went crazy. Now it's come back down since then. But this kind of erratic instability is not how you fix the economy. It's not how you, if you're an investor, if you're a business leader, if you're a CEO of a huge Fortune 500 company, you need to know what are my taxes going to be? What are the tariffs going to be?

Can I build a factory? Am I going to have access to Chinese markets? You need to know, what are my taxes going to be? What are the tariffs going to be? Can I build a factory? Am I going to have access to Chinese markets? You need to know that stuff. And when it's on again, off again every day, it's like being married to somebody with split personality disorder. You don't know who you're going to wake up to every day. It's pretty hard to manage a household. That's wild.

I mean, I don't even know how to get my mind around the fact that simply talking about financial decisions this way or that way, that alone can cause the economy to just go out of whack like a sugar high and then crash and this, that. That's a little disturbing. I mean, is our economy so, in a sense, fragile? Well, okay, so this gets to two other things and then I'll shut up about this topic. When I said earlier that in a matter of just a few months, Donald Trump has dismantled 80 years, what I'm referring to there, both of our foreign policy and our economic policy,

is since World War II, there has been no more trustworthy power in the world than the United States government. That is why NATO has worked so well. That is why we haven't had a World War III. That is why our allies and partners will align with us because they trust us. And it's why we've seen more economic growth and prosperity since World War II than at any other time in the history of this planet. And in the matter of three months, all of that trust has been lost.

Our allies no longer trust us. Europe doesn't trust us. Our trading partners don't trust us. One of the most important trading partners we've had in the last 25 years is Vietnam. The reason is China has been the manufacturing center of the've had in the last 25 years is Vietnam. The reason is China has been the manufacturing center of the global economy for the last 50 years. More and more people are getting uneasy about China as a manufacturing base because look what happened with COVID or if there's some kind of war with China, we're going to lose our semiconductors.

So what the United States has been doing for the last 25 years is incentivizing companies taking their manufacturing from China and moving it to Vietnam. Because Vietnam, despite the war, has become a really strong ally of the United States and we trust that whatever happens with China and Taiwan and all that, if we have a strong relationship with Vietnam, those trading lanes will remain open. So we've been incentivizing this for 25 years. What did Trump do? He put the most punitive trade tariffs on Vietnam, which means the Vietnamese are going, what the heck, United States? We've been doing what you've wanted us to do, and now we're getting punished for it? Why would we trust you in the future? So here's the crazy part. This

isn't a shocker to anybody who's a Christian and has been paying attention to you in the future? So here's the crazy part. This isn't a shocker to anybody who's a Christian and has been paying attention to politics in the last 50 years. Character actually matters. The character of our leaders matter. The character that they display with their families, with their business partners, that matters. And what you see Trump doing with our political allies, with our economic allies, with our military allies, is exactly what he's done to his business partners, to his wives, to his family, to people who've worked for him. He has no character. You cannot trust this man.

And now he's taking that and he's destroying the trust of the American government around the world. This is what I grieve. I mean, what he did in his first term, a lot of the executive orders and whatever else you may have disagreed with, that can all be undone. And a lot of it was undone by Joe Biden. What he's doing right now, this can't be undone because it took 80 years to build those trusts and now he's destroying them.

And that's the part that I worry about more than anything. And that was one point. Here's the second and the last one. This is all happening not because of Donald Trump. It's happening because of Congress. Article one of the constitution gives Congress and Congress alone the right to impose taxes and tariffs. All that Trump is doing right now, he's doing under so-called emergency action. The president has more unilateral power in times of war and in emergencies, in national emergencies. He's declaring our trade deficit a national emergency and under the auspices of that emergency, imposing all these tariffs all over the world.

So that he doesn't have to go through Congress. So he does not have to go through Congress. It would be all shut down if he went through Congress. That's right. Congress today, if they wanted to, could pass a bill rescinding that power of the president and declaring, no, any of these terrors have to go through us. But they're not doing it because Congress, both houses are currently run by the Republicans. But I thought you said many Republicans don't agree with Trump on this. A lot don't, but they're terrified of losing their seats because their voters in their districts still do, because they're watching all of the MAGA informed media that are saying Trump's the most brilliant man in the world, and he's playing

four dimensional chess, and they don't want to lose their seats by going against Trump, because they also know if they go Against Trump he'll turn on them now. Elon Musk has gone against Trump on his tariffs. He's called his Passy. Oh, yeah, he's come out loudly and said this is crazy. He's called one of Trump's top advisors on tariffs a moron So Elon Musk has come out against him Some of the top donors to the Trump campaign have come out against him again They called him up and told him you've got to stop this because the bond market's going to tank.

But members of Congress are not turning on him yet. So this is not just Donald Trump using his constitutional power to do things that are dangerous. It's Congress failing to use its constitutional power to put restraints, checks, and balances on the president. So that's the part that bothers me the most. It's not that we have one man of low character in the White House. It's we have a lot of people with no spines in our government right now that are not putting the interests of the country or the constitution ahead of their own political and professional

goals. That speaks to more systemic issues too, right? Of a political system where the people elected to make decisions are more concerned about staying in power than doing the thing we elected them to do. Exactly. And if you really believe all the rhetoric that came out of the Democrats in this last election, that this is an existential crisis for the country and it's a constitutional crisis and if they really believe Donald Trump was that dangerous, they need to clean up their house too. This gets back to my point. They need to seriously look at themselves

and ask what would make the Democratic Party a viable party for the majority of Americans to vote for us again so that this threat that they perceive coming from MAGA and Donald Trump can be mitigated and that's what's driving me crazy is there should be adults in somewhere in this room and They're not there. So the Republicans aren't taking their responsibility seriously in Congress, and the Democrats aren't taking their national and constitutional responsibility seriously enough to rethink some of their off-the-wall ideas either and position themselves as a more moderate party. Scott, you've given us a masterclass on tariffs, which I was not expecting. Though this has been so helpful because I haven't had the time, space or even desire. Well, I always want to be in the know.

I want to know what's going on and stuff. And I'm like, the amount of time it would take me to get caught up on tariffs is good, bad, who's saying what, what's being, what's propaganda, what's truth. It's just like, I have so many other things going on. I just don't have time for that. So it's, it's, it's really great talking to somebody that already has a massive running start where you have your mind around this stuff. Let me go to a couple of questions here from some people tuning in.

The first one, this is going to go all the way back to our justice conversation. This comes from Phil, who wants to know, how do we call out justice that has turned into revenge without seeming that we don't care about justice issues? I like this question because I feel the same. So I'll see some publicly applauded attempts towards justice that I might agree with the cause, but the way they're going about it, I'm like, I can't really celebrate that. But then I'm like, well, you don't care about... Anyway, I resonate with this question. Love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things in there that are worth tackling. One is that

question might betray the way our culture generally thinks about justice, is we think about justice and go immediately to like criminal justice. Okay. Oh. Right? It's about crime and punishment. And that's a part of justice, but it's a very narrow part of the broader definition of biblical justice. Number two, we assume, again, because of our American judicial way of thinking about justice, we assume that justice is opposed to mercy. And maybe you've heard theological arguments about justice is getting what you deserve and mercy is getting what you don't deserve. I think that's just a really terrible way of framing it. It's a very modern way of framing

it rather than a biblical way of framing it. Scripturally speaking, justice and mercy are not opposites. They're not fire and ice. The way I talk about it in the book is justice and mercy are actually compatible in a sense like peanut butter and jelly. God uses justice and mercy to bring wholeness and bring restoration, to bring that proper ordering of things again. And so what's fascinating is when you read through the commands of scripture, we are repeatedly told to emulate God's mercy, be merciful as I am merciful, but we are never ever permitted to exercise God's vengeance.

That is for Him alone. Paul talks about this explicitly in Romans chapter 12, and he quotes the Old Testament, leave room for the vengeance of God. Instead, love your enemy and serve your enemy. So when it comes to justice and vengeance, vengeance is God's. It's not ours. Mercy is for us. And when you want to talk about what does that look like for a government or for a judicial

system or whatever, I don't believe our judicial system at its best should be just punitive. There was a great movement in the 19th century to reform the judicial system, to reform prisons away from just punitive justice towards restorative justice, rehabilitation, those kinds of things. That's a Christian understanding of justice, not just vengeance. So, it's a great question, but it's one where you got to dig through your layers of cultural assumptions about justice and get back to what the scriptures say. It's one of the reasons why I'm against the death penalty. We don't need to open up that, but that is by definition not restorative, right? And in the end, there will be a death penalty, which we didn't talk about hell, but so vengeance

is mine, I will repay Romans 12, right? And that God will execute that perfectly. We don't need to do that for Him. Another question here. I'm trying to understand, Brandon, if you're still there, I'm just going to read it and see if it makes sense to you. So, shift the messaging to... I think he kind of began mid-sentence playing off of something you said that, you know, we're shifting the message to gain votes. People in power trying to gain votes, they're trying to

gain power. Typical Babylon, he says, what is a faithful Christian's place in this twisted reality? What is an exile to do? So betraying a bit of, I guess, my own political perspective. Yeah, I get, so to kind of, I mean, everything you're talking about, one could argue, yeah, we're living in Babylon. You have people, corrupt people in places of power and why feel too... This isn't worded precisely, it's going to be theologically off, okay? So, I just think, kind of think it out loud, like why or should we get overly invested in the power games among the government we're living under? Obviously, seek to get to the city, obviously pray for leaders, be a good citizen.

But is there a line to where we still maintain our distinct identity? Well, always. Of course, we always maintain our distinct identity. You may not like this, Preston. I really don't like the metaphor of Babylon. I don't like the metaphor of exile. And I don't like the metaphor of exile. Okay. We're over an hour right now. Now you're going to open up that can? I've got a few minutes. I think I know why. And in my book, I explain a wrong way to talk about being an exile on Babylon,

but I think there is a more profoundly biblical way. But I would love you... So, I mean, it's not just exile, it's not just Babylon. I think when you draw from ancient sources, whether it's scripture or it's Augustine or you go on down other sources, they have a lot of wisdom, obviously, and things we need to see and wrestle with and interpret everything. But it gets really challenging to apply it in our context. And here's why. We are not living in an empire. We are not living in a monarchy. We're not even living in an ancient... Pete You don't think America is an empire?

Jared No. Pete Most people would say it is. Jared Here's why. Pete Or at least empire-like. Jared Because who is, not spiritually speaking, who is the final authority in America? Pete Well, I don't think that's a question that would determine whether it's an empire, but... Well, an empire has an emperor. An empire is a monarch. Okay. I see. Yeah.

Right? So, who is the final authority in the American form of government? The final authority is all the wealthy people at the top making the decisions. I would not say it's a... I mean, we are in an oligarchy, not a... Well, technically speaking, it's we the people, right? Now you can argue that we've drifted from that, but it is technically we the people. So when you even look at like a Romans 13, and it's talking about, you know, submit yourselves to the governing authorities, technically speaking in our form of government, the governing authority is the people.

And so you can't just abdicate that responsibility as a Christian. You can't just say, well, that's Babylon and I have no authority. You do have authority because you're a citizen. You have a vote. I find it irresponsible for Christians to say, I'm not going to use the authority that I have inherited in this system of government in a way that loves my neighbor and brings flourishing to the extent I am capable of doing that. I have the freedom of speech.

I have the freedom of assembly. I have the freedom of press. I have the right to vote. I have all those things. I didn't ask for them, but I have them. The question is not should I use them or not. The question is how should I use them? To what end should I use them or not? The question is how should I use them? To what end should I use them?

Should I use them to make sure I have more money or more safety or more security? Or should I use them to make sure the marginalized, the forgotten, the abused, the overlooked, the neglected, that they are cared for better? I can call my congressman. I can petition my senator. I can vote one way or another or a third way. I can abstain from voting. I can write an editorial. I can vote one way or another or a third way. I can abstain from voting. I can write an editorial.

I can post. I can do all that as a citizen in this democracy. No Jew in Babylon could do that and no Christian in early Rome could do that. So it gets a little difficult when you take those settings and go, well, that's how we should operate as Christians in 21st century America. It's a very different context that requires applicable wisdom for where we are right now. And if you want to say, well, I'm just going to back off and I'm not going to be involved in that, okay, well then where do you draw the line? Is it okay for me involved in my local school district? That's the government.

Yeah. You know, so I think it gets real squishy and I want to employ wisdom here rather than rules that say here's what you can be involved in and here you can't. No, no, no. It's how you're involved. So, I don't have great answers. I don't know what to do in this, but I think too many Christians in America, because they're disgusted by this really horrific mess we're in, are saying, ah, screw it.

That's Babylon. I'm just waiting for the kingdom. I'm going to care for my family and church and local community, but, you know, screw all that stuff. I don't think that's a faithful response. Yeah, and I don't want to take too much time here, but I think there are several assumptions in your argument there that I would disagree with or at least challenge or at least say there are other ways of talking about being an exile Babylon that is not presuming a lot of the things you are talking about. So yeah, first of all, I don't think the exile Babylon sort of identity or metaphor means the church shouldn't care about being a good agent in society or speaking truth to power,

or even, I think I make it clear in my book, I'm not even excluding involvement. It is more in everything we do is coming from a fundamental place that the kingdom of God that is a political category, and the kingdoms of the earth are all political categories, and that there is a theological framework where the kingdom of God is, in a sense, fundamentally at odds with the way the kingdoms of the earth are trying to rule the world. And that tension means we are also global kingdom citizens, primarily, who are living amongst the nations, and we're supposed to be good citizens, but at the end, the fundamental root of it all is we are operating in a completely different political sphere.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think the difference is... So, it's not an isolationist escape. It's definitely not, that's Babylon, I'm just going to get to heaven when I die and love my family. That's exactly the kind of exile Babylon theme that I said, I am not at all. I don't think that's a biblical way of saying it. Right. I agree with that. I think the difference is we want to employ the category of citizen, which obviously applies. And Paul was a citizen of Rome and he talks about that. And we are citizens of the kingdom of heaven and we apply that way. But then we tend to apply citizen in the American context pretty narrowly.

I know this sounds strange, but I would argue in the American context, we are not merely citizens. In a weird way, we are also rulers. Because of our constitution, we the people, we have final ruling authority in this country. Now, it's diluted between 350 million Americans. It's not like I'm, you know, Caesar, but we don't usually think about what does it mean for me to be a Christian who also has ruling responsibility in my community. That's the disconnect that the ancient texts don't really talk about very much. Yeah. Obviously America is not exactly the same as Rome or Persia. I guess I'm less confident in America as an actual democracy than you are maybe, but that might be a much, much bigger...

I mean, you either have to have a lot of wealth or know a lot of people with a lot of wealth to even get to a position to where the demos, the population can even vote for you. I had a buddy who is brilliant and actually tried to run for a Congress position in Indiana. He said, I was able to raise a million dollars, but people said, unless you can even raise $15 million, you can't even get, like no one's even going to know who you are. So there's another like way less prepared person who just had tons of wealthy friends and got all the, and he had like millions and millions and millions of dollars and he, you know, easily won that. So I do think there is a sinister monetary thing built into the entire system to say it's the people have power.

I think the upper escalon of society and wealthy people are the ones with power and they are going to be the ones controlling the decisions at the end of the day. I don't want to discount some democratic power that people have, but I think it's, I don't know, way overplayed personally. But my main thing, I'm not a politician, I mean, we could debate that and you'd probably win. For me, it is primarily theological. I do think that the Bible provides for us this metaphor of Babylon, which is applied to all the empires. It's an elastic category. And I do think even though we don't have an emperor,

although you kind of argued that we kind of do, but okay, it's not the same thing. I do think there is a fundamental feel, like I do think America in particular, and other countries have imperial, empire-like qualities to them. Yeah, sure. If you want to say they're empire-like, absolutely.

The difference is... Malcolm says it is an empire, Malcolm Foley. But I said, well, you may be right. I'm going to stick with the more cautious empire-like. Here's the difference. If you are a Christian in the first century in Rome, you have no legitimate avenues for appealing to the system of government and influencing it in a significant way. It's just not built into the system.

It's not, but you're presuming that the early Christians didn't do that for pragmatic reasons. I'm going to say, theologically, in principle, I don't think they would have changed the rhetoric if they did have all these opportunities. I think they still would have separated themselves fundamentally. Let's give an example from the early church, you know about exposure, right? Essentially putting an infant out to die outside the city walls because of whatever reason. Christians in that era often would go and rescue those children and adopt them and raise them as their own.

Now could you imagine sitting at a church meeting at someone's house, I don't know, in Corinth or Ephesus or whatever, and they're talking about, yeah, all this exposure is terrible. All these kids are being abandoned and we're at capacity. Our church is only so big. And someone saying, maybe we can appeal to the government to make that process illegal, or maybe we can appeal to the government to take tax resources and create orphanages for those children while they'll be cared for. That was not an option in ancient Rome. That did not exist. Had it existed, I could imagine Christians going, yeah, maybe we should appeal to our governing authorities and change the law. Or maybe we should appeal to the tax authorities and

say, we want to take some of the revenue in the treasury of our city and build an orphanage that's going to care for those children. I could imagine Christians doing that. And the reason I can imagine Christians doing that is because in later centuries and other forms of government, that's exactly what Christians did. They appealed to their governments and they put public schools in place and orphanages and hospitals and all these different things were created by governments at the behest of Christians. So when I then look at modern America and I compare Christians in early Rome, I'm going, what do I have access to that they didn't?

And it's stuff I mentioned. I have the vote. I have the right of free speech. I have the right of assembly and freedom of press and organization. I can create or help create a movement that persuades my fellow citizens, whether they are Christians or not, that something needs to change because it's unjust, inhumane, or harming innocent people. That was not an option in ancient Rome, given the form of government.

So I don't think it's easy to just go, well, early Christians didn't involve themselves in these things. They didn't have an option. It wasn't available to them. We have availability and options thanks to a liberal form of government in which our only way of appealing to the government is not an armed revolt. We have freedom of speech and organization and freedom of conscience and all these things that has been used for centuries

now to end abolition, to reform prisons, to end child labor, to give freedom to women and the vote to rights to women. We have all these things that have happened, not always through violent revolt, but because Christians organized, used their political power and revenue to bring about positive social change. The civil rights movement, another brilliant example. None of those things could have existed in ancient Rome. So that's where I'm going. We need to not dismiss what scripture says here, but we need to realize that the wisdom

they were employing in their context might look different when it's employed in our context. No, that's good. And again, I don't think I, my political theology, which is always on a journey, I don't think would disagree that Christian, like, yeah, ending slavery, right? And yeah, the silver, I even, you know, I refer to the civil rights as an example of being a prophetic witness in society. What I love about the civil Rights Movement is that it was putting pressure on the governing authorities, the principalities and powers, doing, like accomplishing justice, but it was always from a distinct perspective. It was a bipartisan movement largely, right?

It used Christian principles to do that. It was always kind of a movement from the outside. Like it wasn't completely entangled in the governing authorities. Like it kept its distance to some extent. And I don't want to say this is like a perfect example that they did everything right or, you know, other things did everything wrong. But I do think there is a place to be agents for justice in society that includes political involvement, but done from the right perspective. And, you know, going back to the early church, I mean, yeah, the child exposure, if they had opportunity to end those laws, they would have, but didn't, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the church end or really drastically reduce child exposure by being the church even when they

didn't have political power? I know for a fact they ended prostitution by the 4th century before they had political power because their influence as the church, being the church, humanizing women, teaching men to embody a healthy sexual ethic and not go around sleeping with their prostitutes, they ended up pretty much getting rid of the prostitution system by simply being the church without passing laws. For me, it's not an either or. Right. I agree with that. I am absolutely not saying, oh, forget actually picking up those infants in the wilderness, like just change the lot. No, I'm in favor of both, obviously. But what you see throughout history are faithful Christians based on their

calling and vocation, engaging at different levels of the structures of society. And I don't want to say to the person who is, you know, go back to the 19th century, there are Christians helping people escape slavery through the the 19th century, there are Christians helping people escape slavery through the Underground Railroad. And there are Christians in Congress trying to pass laws to, you know, expand liberation and emancipation and Abraham Lincoln. Like, I don't want to say to one, well, that's a Christian way to do it, and that's not. That's the difference. I think- No, I do it and that's not. That's the difference.

I think we- No, I get that. I get that. That's good. I think we dismiss the theology of vocation and calling. Some are called to be activists, some are called to be pastors, some are called to be prophets, some are called to political leadership in our form of government. And I don't want to dismiss that as an illegitimate expression of Christian faithfulness. As long as their pursuit of justice is through Christian means. Yeah. I mean, fidelity... Loving the enemy, not showing up to wealthy people with power,

not overpowering power with more power, not, you know... Fidelity to Christ is first and foremost always, right? You can't say, you know, the commandment not to steal doesn't apply to me because I'm a stockbroker or the commandment not to lie doesn't apply to me because I'm a politician. Of course not. I just think right now we're in this moment, I'm hearing this from more and more Christian leaders who are just so disgusted by the polarization and politicization of everything in our culture. They're so grossed out by it. And they're also in churches that they don't want to rock the boat because there's some diversity of political thinking in their churches,

that they adopted this attitude of, this is beneath the kingdom of God. I'm not going to engage. I'm not going to talk about it. I don't want to get involved. And it's a kind of convenient way to avoid the prophetic thing that needs to happen right now, because it's just happier for them to dismiss the whole thing and come up with a theological justification for it. I'm like, sorry, guys, like we're in this moment and we're called to be faithful in it. And I'm not just going to write off 2000 years of Christian history because you don't like the way it's working right now. 2000 years, what do you mean?

Like for 2000 years, Christians have been involved in leadership and governments and in social structures to bring about positive good. Pete Not 2000 years. Jared Well, fine. 1600 years, whatever you want to, 1500 years, pick your date, Constantine or whatever. And I'm not in favor of a Constantinian model either. I'm not saying we go back to Christendom. But where we are in the context we're in, I think that's very appealing right now to just dismiss it and wash your hands of it almost like pilot, it's not my problem.

And I know you're not saying that, but I know people who are like, well, Washington's really gross and there's a lot of money and corruption and all this terrible stuff, but local government, that's okay. Well, that's not a principled argument. It's just saying I'm less uncomfortable with it on this level than I am on that level, but it's still involvement in governing and power. So why is it okay in one place but not in another? I think that, I mean, doesn't Caitlin say like local, localized government, like the

more localized you get, the less entangled you are with gross misuse of power that becomes almost necessary to even get to a position where you're at the top of the pyramid. Yeah, maybe. I don't want her, she should be here to speak for herself. I'm not against local involvement at all. I'm just saying there's an unprincipled argument to be saying the local spot is okay, but state's not okay, or federal's not okay.

Here's a different complete category. I had a great conversation with Mike Erie about this. There are some folks who are really uncomfortable with Christians involved in very powerful positions in the government, okay? But for some reason, they're not concerned about Christians having very powerful positions in the marketplace. You're making the argument that it's the oligarchs, it's the super wealthy people in this country that are really ruling everything.

Is it wrong for a Christian to be the CEO of Walmart or Apple? I mean, it's a very powerful position with an enormous amount of influence over governments, over industry, over jobs and trade and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of employees. Like, that's a very powerful position. I have yet to hear a Christian theologian make the case that a Christian can't be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I've heard plenty of theologians say Christians shouldn't be in the Senate or in the White House. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. Why not?

Yeah. I would probably push for consistency there for sure. I mean- So then at what level of management can you be as a Christian in Apple? Can you be the manager of an Apple store? What about, you know, regional manager of a manufacturing thing in Apple? Like, that's where I get, it just breaks down for me as you, people are making these principal declarations about Christians in powerful positions, but I always want to know, well, where is it not too powerful for a Christian? I mean, that's a great question. I think it is.

We are, unless you fully remove yourself from society, become Amish or become a white nationalist in the hills of Idaho, you know, you are paying taxes. Jesus funded His own execution when He pulled the coin out of the fish's mouth, you know? Like we are entangled in systems where these things exist. But I do think there's different levels of that. I mean, if you're a Christian and say you're against violence, I think it's a legitimate thing to say, I will not serve as a combatant, but I will serve as a medic or a chaplain. I could see arguments on both sides of that.

One would say, well, you're still part of this machine that you think is fundamentally wrong. Another is, well, I am within the system, but I'm also being an agent of goodness, peace, and justice, and healing to bring good out of that. So I, I don't know, I think, I, I don't think it's just categorically like you're pacifist. You shouldn't never be involved in the government or something like that. I don't know. I, I, so I think we're in agreement that this is a matter of conscience. Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, everything is some better conscience. I just, I would, I, I mean, would I, well, maybe I'm a bad example.

Like, I always thought, like, could I even maintain my Christian faith and actually be in a position, a high level position of government power? When I tell people, like, I don't believe we should bomb civilians no matter what. I don't think we should spend a trillion dollars on the military. I don't think we should cozy up with people with money and power to gain votes. I think we should love our enemy. We should wash the feet of those who despise us. Money is totally corrupt us. I think I'm going to strive for the financial benefit of the

whole world, not America. Like, I don't care about America's economic flourishing at the expense of other countries. Like, would I be elected? Oh, and I don't swear the allegiance to the flag. Vote for me. You know? Right, right, right. And obviously, I have some distinct Christian beliefs. Okay, maybe I wouldn't be able to serve in those positions. But maybe somebody else who's a little more moderate or whatever would. I'm like, I just, if the system is so driven and operates on using people to gain power and is dependent upon uber wealthy people in positions of power, it just seems like

there's something entangled in that very system that makes me a little nervous getting wrapped up into it while I am very fine speaking truth to power from a distance and trying to operate change from the perspective of I am a citizen of God's kingdom and I'm going to hold the nation that I have influence over accountable. So I'm assuming you do advise people to vote. I don't. I don't. I don't say don't vote or vote.

I don't. I don't know if you've heard my personal position is I don't vote. I mean, I don't vote at all. No, I don't. I know. I mean, that's a very Anabaptist thing. It's not like it's okay. But give me the case for why. And so it took me a good 25 minutes to unpack my very tentative

perspective on Christians and voting. I gotta be honest. I wasn't prepared for this conversation. And yeah, it kind of shows a little bit. I got to be honest. I don't think I was on my best game here. In fact, it's one of those, one of those times when, when you kind of think back into conversation and like, Oh shoot, I should have said this and that. And I, why didn't I bring this boy? How come I didn't push back on that? But anyway, it was good. It was fun. It was honest. So if you want access to the rest of the 25 minutes of our

conversations around Christians and voting, just go to patreon.com forward slash theology and Rob become a subscriber to theology and a raw and to get access to the rest of this episode and many, many, many other, many, many other theology and a raw perks that live on the, the patron, uh, theology rock community. So patreon.com forward slash the Al Jarrar. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.