Episode 108

The radicalization of the American Democratic Party has made it so that anything right of Lenin is Conservative and anything left of Lenin just isn’t Left enough. How can a country withstand such extreme polarities in its politics? Many Christians who would identify themselves as conservative suddenly find themselves in the agreement with centrists, liberals, and progressives, an obviously problematic position. Does it have to be this way? Are Christians bound to conservatism when it has come to compromise on clearly established biblical principles? Is conservatism the appropriate Christian response to the current political landscape, or is it a dangerous counterfeit worldview lulling Christians into sin and apathy? Join us in this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast as we explore these tensions in an interview with recurring guest Edward Thal, the successful businessman and politician who left it all in search of Christ and was gloriously saved by Him.

We shouldn’t be confused by the two. To me, they are very clearly different. And although they are allied in their approach to the world as it is, christianity is very distinct in the fact that it says that we are all irredeemably corrupt. You can be the world’s greatest conservative and your heart is rotten because you were born into sin.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

This is episode 108 of the Removing Barriers podcast and in this episode we will be sitting down with Brother Edward Hall to discuss Christians and conservatism. Sir Edward, it’s a pleasure and welcome back to the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you. It’s always good to see you both. Great.

All right, brother. Well, let’s jump into it. Tell us, how would you define conservatism? Let’s start there. Well, conservatism comes from the word conserve, which means to preserve what works for future use. And so reality is conservative because it rewards what works. And we may say that conservatism is pragmatic. It’s concerned with the world as it actually is. Actual occurrences, it’s practical, deals with things as they are, not as we wish them to be. So there’s a natural link, I think, between Christians and conservatives because Christians tend to see the world as it is. Christians are the ultimate realist. Christianity relates to the God who is here, not the God who we wish him to be or think him to be, or deny him to be. Christians see themselves as they are, and the world is it even. Both are broken. And we see God as the only viable answer, but having the only viable answer to the problems which are real, which we can’t deny. You know, part of the problem, I think, of the world we live in is that our modern world is dominated by people who think reality is defined by what they see and feel. And that’s not a very practical way to approach life. And I think that’s largely responsible for the kind of problems we see in the world today. Yeah, that’s interesting. Defining conservatism, I’ve been preserving what’s there. I never thought about it that way. That’s a unique perspective that I didn’t talk about.

Is conservatism the history of is it more something that just naturally develops when we consider the spectrum of people’s personalities? What I mean by that is there are people who just naturally conserve. There are people who naturally don’t like things to change or naturally seek to keep things the way they are and preserve them for the future. And then there are people who are more free spirited that like to push the envelope and try new things. Is it just a natural progression of just human personality, or is it more of something that Christians themselves introduced? No, I think conservatism is one of the functional parts of life. Okay? You grow up into conservatism. Infants or liberals or progressives or socialists think reality is what they see and feel. When infants discover the real world and start to grow more mature and learn to relate to the world as it is, they naturally become conservative. Those who are closeted, those who remove themselves from the real world, refused to face the real world, never grow up and never become conservative. Might have been evan. Say it. Who said that conservative is a liberal who was mugged by reality. And so that’s how I see the world.

Okay, so then there’s a difference then, between conservative as in the definition that you just gave, and conservatism as a movement. Could you give us maybe a nutshell history of conservatism, say, in the United States? Yes, it’s easy to get bogged down in the words and the definitions. But as far as the United States is concerned, there is absolutely no question in the historical record that the United States was founded by conservative Christians. You need only to go back to our initial document, the Mayflower Compact. The Mayflower Compact, in fact, the first document written by three men. Men who had freed themselves from tyrannical government and launched themselves into a new world to be free to worship God as they believed God should be worshiped. And they were Christians. Every one of them voluntarily bound themselves to a document in which they stated in its opening statement they had come to the new world to propagate the gospel of Jesus Christ. So there’s no question that in the famous landing at Plymouth Rock to which we trace America’s roots origins was a Christian event. Now, there was one very interesting. That Jamestown settlement, which occurred sometime before that, was a terrible failure. It never got off the ground. That’s why we don’t see it in America as the founding event of America, the Jamestown settlement. They actually experimented with socialism. They combined all they had, and those who could work, worked. And those who could eat, ate. And those who just wanted to take, took. And pretty soon that whole settlement floundered. So with that as our basis, as our background, yes, it’s fair to say that America was originally settled by a group of people who were undeniably Christian and conservative in their worldview. And the two, of course, go together because Biblical Christianity relates, as I’ve said, to the world as it is and to us as we are, not as we wish we could be, what we wish the world would be. And unless you adopt that worldview and seek for answers to the problems that then present themselves to you, you’re never going to make any real progress. And that, by the way, is what makes people on the left liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxists they’re all the same. Basically, today they’re blatant, unmasked Communists in this country. The reason for their frustration and rage is that reality never agrees with them, with their fantastical views of life. And every time they try and achieve something based on fantasy, it ends in disaster.

I’ll give you a very topical example. We’ve just passed a massive spending bill in the midst of historical high levels of inflation in this country. It’s going to increase spending to an astronomical level. It’s going to accelerate the problems we have right now, and it’s named the Inflation Reduction Act. That sums up in one picture what’s wrong with America today and indeed the world. People living in fools universe, denying reality and coming up with alternative solutions that will never work because they don’t confront reality and the world as it is.

Yeah, that’s an interesting outlook because definitely we see examples and you mentioned, of course, that spending bill that was just passed. But also we can look at groups like Black Lives Matter and other groups that are either maxis or liberal in their beliefs and see how they try to force the world into being what they think it should be rather than accepting it. I don’t know if accept is the right word, but accepting it as it is and seek to make it better. So on that thought as well, most Christians tend to consider themselves conservative. Yes, and I think you can touch on some reason why that may be. But also, do you think that conservatism is a practical outworking of applying Christianity to the current times? And when I say Christianity, I want to distinguish it from the religion Christianity and talk about more biblical Christianity, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ. Yes, it’s natural for a Christian to be conservative and for a conservative to be a Christian. But I don’t want to imply that when we use a political label conservatism that it’s always right or it’s always Christian, they just happen to move in the same lane. I can’t imagine that a committed leftist, liberal socialist could ever be a Christian. I mean, a true Christ, a bornagain Christian, a Bible based Christian, a Christian submissive to God because the two are, in a philosophical context, diametrically opposed to each other. Perhaps I can frame it this way. The Bible states unequivocally, in the beginning God. That’s where everything begins for us as Christians in our thinking, in our world view, in the way we conduct life. We have a god consciousness. Now, you could be a good Christian or a bad Christian, but in the back of your mind you’ve always got a God consciousness. We live in an age where there is a new clarion called suitable to our times. They’ve rejected the idea of in the beginning God, and we now live in the domain of a secular religion that declares emphatically in the future. Man. We have deposed God. We have elected ourselves as God in his dead. We act in his stead. And so it makes them very active in trying to solve the world’s problems and making the situation worse. But when you find yourself on that side of the political spectrum, whether you know it or not, your faith is in man and man’s ingenuity. If you find yourself on the conservative side of the political spectrum, you could be just as much an atheist as a socialist. But the chances are also that you’re going to bump into a lot of people on the conservative side who are submissive to the God of the universe, who acknowledge God, who acknowledge that God indeed is the one who oversees the affairs of men.

So let me ask you this, because I see and understand what you’re saying when you say conservatism can be the natural outpouring of Christianity. But wouldn’t you say that libertarianism or being a libertarian is probably more in line with Christianity than conservatism? The reason why I said that can we argue that God is a libertarian? I hope we’re not being sacrilegious here, but hear me out. God give us a free will to choose whatever we want. Of course we can’t choose our consequences. God tend to allow us to live and let live with the understanding that they’re going to be punishment for this conservatism kind of say, hey, there going to be some sort of boundaries that you have to live within, and if you want to be part of a civilized society, these are the laws that you have to abide. God tend to allow us to say, hey, these are the laws. You don’t necessarily have to obey them, but if you don’t, they’re going to punish me. Yeah. So where am I going wrong in that thinking? The problem here is political labels or social labels that we try to define ourselves by. Yes, libertarianism has a fair attitude to life, one in which we want maximum individual freedom within a sociopolitical framework. We also respect others and we shun the dictates of big government. We want to be independent of the government, telling us what to do and how to think and how to behave, which is of course, what is the socialist dogma. Libertarians reject that. So the Christians, because we submit to a God who tells us how to behave. But at the heart of libertarianism is, the way I see it, an impulse towards if it feels good, do it. You’re responsible for yourself, and if you want to behave in a certain way without injuring your neighbor, then go ahead and do it. Well, that’s not the conservative biblical view because the Bible says, no, there are very clear boundaries to what you can and can’t do. And as you’ve rightly said, there are consequences if you overstep those boundaries. So while libertarians are an alternative, more sane approach to life than a socialist view, a progressive viewpoint, I don’t think it’s quite as effective as a lifestyle impulse as Christian conservatism. If I can lump those two together. Christians living in a society where they adopt conservative principles of governance or they employ conservative principles of governments. Problem here is, you know, so much has been written about this for so many centuries. Men who are much deeper thinkers than I am and develop philosophies of governments and both in society and for man as an individual have been debating this issue for a long, long time. And if you go to the literature, there’s a pretty clear definition now available to anyone who wants to think about it as to the differentiation between these different sets of people, that is, in a political context. Just as if you are looking for answers, spiritual answers, there is a vast array of research and documentation that covers the whole spectrum of religious observance and religious belief.

But at the heart of both the political system and the religious system, there is a core truth that is foundational. And the one that, as a Christian, I take my life on is the worldview that says I’m broken. I live in a world that’s broken, and only God has the answers. If I submit to God, I will live a life that’s consequential and productive and constructive. And eventually when I graduate to the next life, I’ll be in God’s presence. To me, that’s the only sane way to approach living in this present evil world.

Yeah. The people that you talk about, Brother Tall, who have these wise and very educated men who have debated these points and thought through these points for centuries, we have the blessing and the benefit of receiving all of their information and trying to wrestle with it in our own times. Whereas before, let’s say we go back to the founding of the nation, they were probably working out these things in real time. So what we know today, they were probably trying to figure out in the real throws of life. One of the things I wonder is, would you say that the Founding Fathers were Christian? Like explicitly Christian and explicitly conservative? Were they both or were they just merely very conservative? Because when we think about our Founding Fathers, for example, many of them would hold to a more some of them were deist, some of them held more to a libertarian sort of way of looking at things rather than a conservative way of looking at things. How would you describe the Founding Fathers? Were they Christians, conservatives, or both, or none? As a body of men, I say they were largely conservative. By their own testimony, probably the majority of them were actually Christian. That is the biblical definition of being a Christian years ago, a book, and I don’t remember the author, but it’s his collection of George Washington’s letters. And I believe the book was titled george Washington’s Sacred Fire. And what it showed very clearly from his own writing was that he was a Christian as recognizable as any biblical Christian today. He understood salvation. He understood the role of Christ, his relationship with Christ and live that sort of consequential life. And many of his compatriots were the same. Now, you had someone like a Benjamin Franklin who was a dear, but all of those guys, Jefferson, all of them had a God consciousness. And the only God they knew, in a practical sense was the Christian God, the God of the Christian Bible. The Old Testament, the New Testament back in those days, that was their religious framework. Whether or not they were committed Christian, born again Christian, the framework in which they lived was Christian. And the Tokyo, when he came to America to survey this new country, the Frenchman, he recognized the fact that America was a Christian nation. And the impulse of all Americans, whether it be the leaders or the populace, was against the framework or within the framework of biblical Christianity. That’s what motivated and impelled the country to become the freest, most productive, most affluent country in the history of the world nation society. Because Christian principles were embedded into the consciousness of the average American. And in fact, the Founding Fathers noted that the Constitution they divide and the country that they founded would survive only if the populace at large adhered to the principles of the Bible. They had a religious, God fearing foundation. They would trust in God as the ultimate. A declaration of independence is there that we are. Each individual American relates to God and our government is subservient to God. My ultimate authority is not the president of the United States, but the God who created this world and indeed formed from the dust of the earth the greatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather of the president of the United States. But it is in really simplistic terms. We all descended from the God of the universe who created this world. And that was the worldview that early America held without question. They just accepted that aspect for probably 100 years. In the early days of America, the only textbook in the schools was the Bible, the only book that was readily available. And children learned to read and write and learn their social responsibilities from reading the Bible, from being taught what the Bible taught. So the whole framework of this country was unquestionably American. Sorry. The framework of the country was unquestionably Christian. There’s a Supreme Court decision handed down, I think in 1893 where it made that very point that this is undeniable, that this is a Christian nation. I know that President Obama at one stage talked about the tremendous contribution that Muslims had made to this country, and that was nonsense. And not that I’ve got anything against Muslims per se, but that statement of this was nonsense.

Yeah, I remember when he said that. He even went as far as to say this is not a Christian nation, at least not just we are Muslim, we are this, we are that. I remember when he said that and he said that and got away with it because country has drifted so far away from its roots and really has no awareness of history. One of the tragedies of our modern age is people don’t read history anymore. If we did and understood history, we would be in a messier end, quite frankly.

But would you say going back to that Obama quote, would you say he’s wrong, though, presently, are we still a Christian nation? I understand the foundation, the founding was Christian, or at least yeah, I know, dear, but we’re certainly not a Biblical Christian nation. But you only have to walk around Washington, DC for an hour or so, and you’re going to see Bible verses ditched into monuments all over Washington, DC. Why going to the Jefferson Memorial, it says right there. I mean, if you stand in that very impressive little rotunda and look up at the wall above you and down the side, there are numerous references to Scripture and to God. You go to the Lincoln Memorial, there’s an entire wall. The second inaugural address reads like a sermon. There are multiple references to Scripture. That was just the way they were because they were Christians.

All right, well, let’s jump a little bit deeper into Christianity and conservatism. Where do you think they differ? I have some thoughts on this, but I want to hear what you think about the difference between Christianity and conservatism. Yeah, I’m not sure that they should even we shouldn’t talk about them as being the same or related in any close sense. I mean, Christianity and Christians, that is a spiritual impulse. Conservatism is a political impulse. They are two different things that, as I’ve said before, are traveling in the same lane. For instance, I think it would be wrong to assume that if someone is a born again Christian, he is automatically a conservative because Christians have certain liberty and freedom too. So it’s possible that one could be a Bible believing Christian and still be, for instance, a Democrat in the American context or certainly liberal in the American context. I don’t, however, emphatically deny that a Christian in the biblical sense could ever be a Marxist. That’s impossible. Marxism is the alternative religion to Christianity, not a political philosophy. Marxism is a religion, and it’s a religion that dethrones God and deifies man. Marxists preach the gospel of if you do it our way, we will at the human race recreate, eaten on earth. That’s their impulse. It’s quite a noble impulse in a sort of really isolated sense. They want to create a perfect world, and in order to do that, they’ve got to destroy the world as it is. And the problem is, if they ever achieve that end, they will just be left with dust and ashes. But that is their impulse, I think Dr. Yatsky, who said, in the absence of God, anything is possible, and that’s the world we live in today, where men have dethroned God, set themselves up as God in his head and are trying to create a new and better world, the great reset, the new world order. That’s an impulse that has been around for over 100 years. They’re very close in their minds to achieving that. So it’s impossible to be a Bible believing Christian and a Marxist. I think it’s possible to be a Bible believing Christian and a liberal. It’s possible to be a Bible believing Christian and a libertarian. But because of the very nature of Christianity and conservatism, it’s more likely that a Christian who believes the word of God and is part of the family of God will in his approach to life, his worldview, his political affiliations, his natural response to the world as it is, that person will be a conservative.

Let’s elucidate that a little bit and bring it in today’s context because we have a lot of conservatives that are clearly not Christian and many people would assume that they’re good people. I think of the Ben Shapiro’s or the Jordan Peterson’s or the jockey willing Tim Pool. The list just goes on. All of these people who have stood up against culture Marxist ideology that has reared ugly head in recent years in the United States after being dormant, I would say many, many years. Can we be good without God is my question. One of the things that I’m concerned about within the sphere of Christianity are Christians that would not be seduced by woke ideology because it’s so blatantly and obviously evil. But they may be seduced and led away by people who are not Christian but conservative and labeled as good simply because they stand against woke ideology. Can someone be good without God? And how does that tie into this discussion that we’re having about Christians and conservatism?

Let me put this in as well because I think this going to lead into that and I’ll give you the floor after that brotherhood. So when I think about the difference between conservatism and Christianity, I have a list of things that I come up with. So conservatives say you are good based on your actions to Biblical Christianity say that you are bad and cannot be good. No righteousness of your own outside of Christ. Conservatism say we can make our world a better place by having values, practices, norms and keeping them that way. Christians say that the world can only be made better through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Conservatism look at man politicians to fix the world problems too. Biblical Christians, they say only God can fix this broken world. And then conservatism societal change happens slowly, but society still pull and twist conservatism a bit, even though, as I said, the change happens slowly. Biblical Christianity or true Biblical Christianity, we are grounded in God’s word, which never change. So take that into James question where you say can we be good without God first? Where in my thoughts, on my off base. And then can we be good with our God? No, I think he sums it up pretty well. Practice. According to Bible, we can’t be good without God. No government program can eliminate evil. Only God has that power. So however conservative you might be in your approach to social issues, you’re never going to be able to progress very far without your program becoming corrupted by the world as it unless there’s a strong God impulse stated in such crass terms behind or within everything you’re doing. But we shouldn’t be confused by the two. To me, they are very clearly different. And although they are allied in their approach to the world as it is, christianity is very distinct in the fact that it says that we are all irredeemably corrupt. You can be the world’s greatest conservative and your heart is rotten because you were born into sin. That the gospel. You could be equally rotten, but be born again into the kingdom of God. And that’s when the healing takes place and you begin to change and become a better person, not because of what you’ve done, but because of what God is working inside you. The heart and soul of Christianity is one of the most powerful sentences ever written. One short sentence, Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is dead. That’s the governing principle of this world. And when it says death, there is talking of spiritual death. The gift of God is eternal life to Jesus Christ our Lord. If you’re on the left hand side of that sentence, the wages of sin, if that’s where you’re living, everything you do is corrupt. It has death in it. There’s death in the past. If you’re on the right hand side of that equation, if you’re part of the life of Jesus Christ, then something tangible and lifechanging has come into your life and you are no longer who you used to be and the corruption, you now being healed. And so on the surface, there might still be similarities between someone on the left hand side of the equation and someone on the right hand side of the equation. But if you dig a little deeper, there is no similarity, there is no goodness in anything in this life except in Jesus Christ. So biblical Christianity relates to a living Christ, not to a doctrine about Christ. It’s about practice, not theory. It’s about denial of self, not personal achievement. It’s both an event and a process. It’s important to understand what makes a Christian two things an event. First, there is a day, a time in a place where an individual encounters the living Jesus Christ and is changed for eternity. Amen. And from then on, it’s a process of spiritual growth over time, growth in the grace and knowledge of this transcendent Christ who has been encountered at that event. That’s Christianity. It’s not conservatism, it’s not a political philosophy, it’s not a worldview. It is a relationship with the living God. Now, when you try to squeeze that into a political mold to make it fit a political mold. There is no fit. It’s just coincidental because of the reality of the real world dealing with things as they are. Christians deal with things as they are. Conservative deals with things as they are. Therefore, Christians and conservatives are often found in the same lane, but they are not necessarily the same people. A Christian is not automatically part of a conservative movement, and a conservative is most definitely not automatically a Christian.

Amen. You’re listening to the remote in various podcasts. We sitting down with brother Edward Toll and we’re talking about Christianity and conservatism. We’ll be right back.

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so let’s shift a little bit and talk about the Constitution, because a lot of folks will define themselves as a constitutionalist, and a lot of folks who consider themselves a constitutionalist would also consider themselves conservative. Is there a distinction between those two? No. I think the American Constitution is a brilliant document, the most ideal document for the governance of men ever devised in world history and has led to the foundation and the growth of the freest nation in the history of the human race, America. So I’m a great admirer of both of the Constitution as a governing document and the men who devised it. The way the Constitution came together was, I think, rather miraculous. But it’s not a religious document. It’s a document advised by men, I believe men who were swayed by their allegiance to Christ in the first place, but nevertheless document designed by men for the governance of people in a civil society. And as such, it’s the finest document of assault ever written and created the greatest nation ever seen. But my belief in the constitution will not get me to heaven. My solution to the constitution will not get me to heaven. And that’s the difference. Why do you think that conservatives and liberals interpret the Constitution so drastically differently? Let’s even look at the Supreme Court. My argument and my contention is why is it. That the judges are so far apart and they’re looking at the same document. Unless you can make a comparison to Christianity. When I say Christianity religion, not biblical Christianity, where we have so many denominations and we seem to be so far apart, dive into that. The answer is very simple. It’s very simple. The conservative sees the Constitution as a bedrock foundational document upon which a society can be built. If you mess with the foundation, everything else crumbles right. A modern progressive resent that immovable nature of the Constitution. They see it as a living document that must evolve with the times. And the impulse behind that idea is because they see themselves as God. If I’m God, I don’t want to be bound by a document. I get to make the rules. And if the rules change today and they are different to what they were yesterday, well, I can do that because I’m God. That’s the impulse in their thinking, whether they like it or not, admit it or not, they get to do that and change things according to their likes and dislikes because they can, and they should, because they’re God. They act in place of God. If it wasn’t for them, the world would fall apart in their minds. And that, by the way, is the impulse behind the things that are destroying this country, where they come up with these cockamaby mantis schemes, this whole climate warming, climate change nonsense. They’re going to destroy the world in order to make the world a better place. It’s insane, and we shouldn’t have any truck with it. We shouldn’t fall into that trap. Just as the Bible is an unchangeable book and you can bank your life on it, so a nation needs an unchangeable Constitution if it’s going to survive. And there are people who don’t want the United States to survive. So one of the things they’re doing is they’re taking the Constitution. But it’s the natural outcome of people who think that God is dead and they are alive and they are God.

With all that in mind, Brother Tall, do you believe that Christians should take political party sites, whether it’s Republican, Democrat, Libertarian? Should we be affiliated with either of those political groups as Christians? Yeah, because we should be good citizens and we should be active in society to make it a better place. If I’m the Christian who lived in the closet, never let anyone else know what I believe, how am I going to affect society? So naturally, I’m going to subscribe to the views or to a political party whose impulse is similar to mine, whose direction is similar to mine. But I’m not going to join a political party because I believe it’s Christian, and I don’t want them to come to my church because they think I’m a Republican or a Democrat. And I hate to say this, but people who get confused over this simply don’t understand their Christianity. I mean, christians get confused. I don’t blame the world for being confused. They live in a perpetual state of confusion. But for Christians to lose their way in this regard, it’s embarrassing. It’s almost shameful. We have a book. I’m holding it in my hand right now. And this book tells me everything I need to know about life, righteousness, the afterlife, who I am, why I am, where I’m going and where I came from. It’s the only book ever written that tells me about my origin, my purpose, my morality, my destiny. The only book that contains complete answers to those questions. Why do I need anything more than that? And if I understand, this book is my load star, my guideline for life. And I’m not going to get confused about whether I can be a Democrat or a Republican or whatever else I want to call myself. Whatever political label I put on myself, my impulse is my Christianity. And I’m going to look for someone to support, whose views, whose life, whose inner impulse comes closest to matching mind. And I don’t ever expect that person to be necessarily a good Christian. I just want him to be a good politician who will govern according to the principles that are closest to my movement.

Yeah, that’s interesting because a lot of Christians would actually identify themselves with a political party. And this is where it’s kind of new for me, being someone who wasn’t born and raised in this country. Because where I’m from in the islands, we don’t necessarily go about identifying ourselves with a political party, with a political movement. Of course, there are people that would identify lifehouse in this party or lifehouse in that party, which I never understand. But there wasn’t an identity of conservatism or liberal because when it comes to moral issues, both parties kind of have the same standard, so to speak, at least outwardly. The difference is how much money should be spent on roads or how much money should be spent on providing housing for people or how much money should we put in social programs? That’s the debate, for the most part, in the US. It seems to be more of what is our moral duty? What should we be doing to help or bring about utopia, if you want to put it that way. Yes.

I think that perhaps we should throw out there the concept of patriotism as well, just being careful not to blur the line between being patriotic and being Christian. Even though this nation has a Christian underpinning and a Christian founding, and even though we love our country and we absolutely are proud to be American, that’s not the same as being a Christian. Yeah, absolutely right. We should be careful, particularly in our church services, where sometimes in our patriotic services, it can tend to take on a more maybe this word is too strong, but I can’t think of a better word. It can take on a feel of almost idolatrous feel where we’re worshipping the virtues of the country and singing about all these different things which are not bad to sing about our country. Be proud of it. But when it starts blurring the line between Christianity and that love of country, that can get into some tricky waters, I think. Yeah. And it’s a sign of spiritual immaturity. Okay, listen, you don’t have to be a Christian very long. You’re trying to walk as a disciple of Christ. It becomes very obvious very quickly that unhappily. So an awful lot of Christians I’m talking about born again Christians, are spiritually immature and really don’t understand what their beliefs are about and what life is about. So let me give you an example. That’s what I want to condemn anyone, but it’s so apparent, it disturbs me so much because it’s so prevalent. This whole prosperity gospel nonsense is totally against the doctrine of Christ, but it appeals to people who are spiritually immature, who think that all it takes is some sort of faith to manipulate God, to become their big piggy bank in the sky. And they do that because they don’t understand or they don’t want to understand, or they’ve never been challenged by the true gospel. They were simply offered to Jesus, who loves them, forgives them, and wants to give them a lot of goodies after that. And that’s not Christianity. That’s a pale reflection of man’s version of Christianity. And so when we get into that area of immaturity, it’s easy to get the issues confused. The kind of things we’re talking about now to confuse the issue of what is a Christian and what is a conservative, what is a Republican, what is a Democrat? And every Christian has a responsibility to first answer the question, what am I as a Christian? What is my responsibility? What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? And as uncomfortable as the truth is, the basic operating principle of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is to get on a cross every day and die, to deny yourself, to put to death your own impulses or submit your own impulses to Christ and let his life dominate your life. Not only are we not taught to do that to many churches, many of us don’t want to do that because we don’t want to give God that much control of our lives. And when we adopt that attitude, it’s easy to make mistakes and to get confused about what Christianity is. You know, God describes Himself as a jail of star. He doesn’t want to share our commitment with others. He wants us for himself. Read Malachi. The end of the Old Testament. God so values us that when we talk about Him, when we think about Him, when we pray to Him, when we worship Him, that’s recorded in heaven, because that’s why Jesus came to die for us. Jesus didn’t come to die to make us good Republicans, good Democrats, good Americans. He came to make us part of the family of God, and he paid a tremendous price for us. And his intention, whether we like it or not, is to completely transform us into his image. Not our image, not the image of something else, but into his image. And to do that, we are going to die to sell daily.

Amen. Brother Tall, do you think that how someone views the end times has a role to play in determining how Christians interface with conservatism? Like, for example, the post millennials believe that we are here to bring the kingdom of God to this world, transform this world into the kingdom of God, and then at last Christ will come and take over after we’ve done the legwork of establishing his kingdom on the earth. Whereas there are premillennialists that believe in the rapture, that believe that we’re only here for a small amount of time, so there’s no need to get too involved with things in this world. And there are premillennialists that believe that even for the small amount of time that we are here in this world, we ought to make things better. So there’s obviously a spectrum there. Do you think that how we view end times plays a role in determining the line between conservatism and absolutely. There’s a great difference between your Calvinist viewpoint that God wants to establish a kingdom on earth and shared in this present world, which is also what the Muslims are trying to do and the Roman Catholics are trying to do, established God’s kingdom on earth. And in my view is that God, in fact, was to change the world, but he’s going to do it. The world will not change because I am a good Christian and get involved in this world to the degree that I’m going to forcibly change the world into the mold of Jesus Christ, I believe that is what God is going to do. In the end, when Jesus Christ returns to the earth and he will set up his kingdom, he will do it, and he will be the authority on this earth. And I think when we blur that is, when we get ourselves into trouble, when we start to become agents of change, agents of political change in the name of Jesus Christ, I think we’re wandering way off the reservation, and that’s a dangerous place to be.

Yeah, definitely. Ok brother told the Bible says in Joshua 5:13-15, and it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went on to him and said unto him, at Dull for us or for Adversaries? And he said, Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord, and I now come. And Joshua fell on his face on the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, what set my Lord unto his servant? And the captain of the Lord of the horse said unto Joshua, lose thy shoe from off thy feet, for the place where and do standest is holy ground. And Joshua did so. Let’s wrap it up with that verse in mind and tell us in a nutshell what is true biblical Christianity. Well, that passage you read is a perfect summary, if I could put it into modern English. What happens here is Joshua meets the captain of his soul, Jesus Christ, and says, whose side are you on? And the answer is, that’s the wrong question. Whose side are you on, Joshua? It’s not a question of whose side is God on? But you, Mr. Individual, whose side are you on? If you’re on Christ side, you’re in the right place. If you constantly are trying to get God to join your side, you’re going to go terribly wrong and mess everything up. And that’s part of what’s wrong with our world.

Yeah. So good. Told you. Edward Thal. Thank you so much for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you.

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