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Psych and Theo Podcast
Welcome to the "Psych and Theo Podcast". We’re your hosts, Sam and Tim. Join us as we tackle cultural issues by providing insightful discussions from both a theological and psychological perspective.
From celebrity pastors and church controversies to hot-button topics like abortion, gay marriage, and gender identity, we address these issues with grace, humor, knowledge, and wisdom. If you’re looking for thought-provoking conversations on church culture, pop culture, mental health, moral issues, and all things related to the Bible, then you’ve come to the right place.
We do our best to bring our unique perspectives to navigating the complexities of faith and culture through the lens of theology and psychology.
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Psych and Theo Podcast
Ep. 31 - Politics and the Christian, Part 2: Navigating Christian Responsibility
Ever wondered how store-bought cookies could almost win a baking competition? We kick off this episode with a light-hearted cookie tale that mirrors our podcast's own transformation from the original 3C Podcast to the dynamic discussions we have today. What started as a fun workplace story serves as a metaphor for unexpected journeys and shared experiences. From there, we embark on a thoughtful exploration of how Christians can thoughtfully engage with politics and government, all through the lens of biblical teachings and Romans 13.
Join us as we unpack the critical role Christians play in the political arena, considering both historical context and modern-day responsibilities. Reflecting on the shift from early Christian limitations in Roman politics to the influential role they now hold in democratic societies, we address the complexities of aligning faith with political involvement. Our conversation navigates the fine line between endorsing political figures and adhering to gospel principles, emphasizing the delicate balance Christians must maintain in their societal engagements.
Finally, we tackle one of the most contentious issues of our time: the government's role in the abortion debate. Through thoughtful analogies and Christian perspectives, we discuss the moral imperatives guiding this debate. We offer insights into how personal beliefs shape public policy and the importance of advocating for life and justice in a faithful manner. This episode promises to provoke thought, encourage deeper engagement, and perhaps even inspire you to reconsider the ways in which faith influences your own political choices.
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All right, everyone, welcome back to the Psych and Theo podcast. We are back with another episode on politics and the purpose of government and a biblical worldview. I'm joined by my buddy, sam Landa, over here. Sam, what are you munching on over there?
Speaker 2:You're eating something these delicious cookies, man, they're the ones you just buy from the store. Just put them in the oven, cook them. Thanks for bringing them Wow.
Speaker 1:It's delicious. It's like I told you to say that when I asked you. Yeah, sam, I brought some cookies to give us some, give us a little bit of motivation as we're recording. I'm gonna be hype now. Uh, those of you who may not know this, uh, when we record these episodes, we usually record two or three at a time. So we, we do these long recording sessions and we need we need to pick me up, you know, in between episodes we just don't do coffee as much we did start coffee.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I have to share this because I was thinking about it. Oh okay, sorry, let me interrupt you.
Speaker 2:No, no go ahead, go ahead remember when we first were thinking about a name for our podcast? Oh yeah, so I think we're going to show you guys on our page or something what our original name was going to be. It was going to be the 3c podcast. I don't know if we've mentioned that before, but I'm going to show you guys the logo so you can see what horrendous work we were doing man, that was actually my idea.
Speaker 1:You know, is it for the 3c? Yeah, that was, that was uh, because we were like what if we did like coffee, you and we were always talking about coffee at the beginning of every episode coffee, culture and Christianity. It sounded so good at the time. You know, I've had some good ideas along the way in my life, but that's not one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my color scheme thing on that was was way off though Red and yellow and something else. I like what we ended up with. It looked like the flash. Yes, yes, we'll have to show you guys tomorrow, but yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So can I tell you a story about these cookies though? Absolutely yeah. So I want to tell you. One time I almost won a baking competition with these, with break and bake cookies, and it wasn't't. It wasn't like I was I was cheating or like I was being dishonest. Okay, this was at work many, many years ago.
Speaker 1:Um, work decided every friday we would do this thing where everyone brings a food item in. Uh, it's the same food item, but of different varieties. And this, this one week, was just about cookies. Everyone bring in your favorite cookie, okay, or just bring in cookies, and we'll all bring in all different types of cookies. And people are like peanut butter, chocolate chip, you know all that stuff, and like, okay, like I'll just you know, I'll just get some break-and-bake cookies, no big deal, like like chocolate chip or something you know. Like it's no big deal. You know, like we're just all bringing the different types of cookies, and I'm a guy who cares. You expect anything less or more from me. Um, so that's my plan.
Speaker 1:Well, midway through the week it morphed into this competition. People were like in the, in the chat, the team's chat, about this, and they're uh, going on about, like I'm doing this cookie and it's turning this whole competition. So everyone's like I'm bringing my cookies, I'm bringing my cookies, my, my mama's cookies, you know. And so I'm like, well, I'll just bring my cookies for people to enjoy, okay, not my cookies. Like toll, house breaking, baked cookies, house break and bake cookies, man, okay. And uh, so the day comes, friday comes, and we all bring our cookies and we all put them, you know, on the table and you know people start trying, taste, testing the cookies. And they all start they like one after the other is commenting on, wow, how these cook my cookies. Like, yeah, wow, they're so perfect, they're just so round, like so perfect circles, like they're so soft and like the flavor is just so rich. And I'm just sitting there like they honestly think I made these cookies from scratch.
Speaker 1:Like one dude went all out, he made his own personal ice cream and everything. And then so, like people were, people went all out on this. I'm like, so I, toward the end of the, I was like I think I would have gotten second yeah, had I not said anything. Like the points were getting racked up and I'm like, oh gosh, I'm in second place, I better. I just started laughing. Like what do you laugh, I'm. I'm like, I broke the news to him, yeah, and then there was just this indignation all around. How could I have brought bake and break cookies to this, to this competition? And I'm like you guys, it didn't start out as a competition, it was just a time of bringing cookies together. Yeah, were you the only one who did that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Everyone baked their own cookies. Yeah, but that was because it turned into a competition. Oh my gosh, that's so. I'm like. I like I didn't feel any guilt over. I'm like look you guys. You guys changed the rules of the game here, yeah, anyway. Yeah, I had no idea that break and bake cookies were that superior to everyone's homemade cookies, but apparently they are yeah, did you like anyone else's cookies more than the ones that you brought?
Speaker 1:I don't remember yeah, that would have been funny now I could make some cookies nowadays that would rival or surpass break and bake. So okay, but what's breaking? Makes are good, they are good, they are good, okay, okay, thank you. All right, let's let's get into the episode. The first part, part one of this.
Speaker 1:We did a purpose of government and I explained that there was a primary function and a secondary function. The primary function and we got this from Romans 13. The primary function is the restraint on evil, the punishment of evil, you know, the restraining evil via punishment. And then the secondary function is the promotion of good via the punishment of evil. So the secondary function flows from the primary function. Government promoting good is only possible when government properly restrains evil. And so those two functions are not, they're not equal themselves. One is inferior to the other. They're not equal themselves, one is inferior to the other. So government is an entity of. It has a negative function in society. It's an entity that instills fear in people to do the right thing, not to commit violence against people, not to defraud people, not to assault people, things like that. And when it does that well, then society can function and flourish and people can uh, can live, yeah, and therefore do good, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you gave us some context behind Romans 13. Yeah, right, um, but you were saying about the questions. Oh, you had some. You had so many questions, yeah, and I feel like people would have these questions as well. And, um, let's, let's get into these questions that were coming up for me, tim, and I think a lot of people will have these questions.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest ones was OK, so now that we understand what the role of government was at that time, then I was starting to think, ok, does that still apply today? And it does, so what does that mean? So how should Christians, then, engage the political process and conversation that we have today? Because, obviously, right now, we have two candidates who are trying to, you know, get our votes and they're promoting certain policies. We know where we stand on issues, we know where we're voting or who we're voting for. We know where we stand on issues, we know where we're voting or who we're voting for. But, with that, how should Christians engage this process, considering the information you gave us about Romans 13 and the cultural background there?
Speaker 1:Well, so the implication of Romans 13 is that governments have a limited role in society. Governments are not the same thing as society. So that would tell you. That's one thing. Society is people relating to one another, doing commerce with one another, going to church with one another, all those things that, in society, we do without the threat of violence. Okay, the government has a role to play in preserving order in society, but it's not the same thing as society. The government doesn't define human society, or the government is not the, let's say, the progenitor of human society. It doesn't create human society. Human societies create governments.
Speaker 1:This is the main thesis of the Declaration of Independence is that governments actually derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a government no longer has the consent of those who it governs, it actually forfeits its right to rule. Because there was a debate at that time that the English kings would they appeal to this, what was called the divine right of kings, that this divine authority and they would use Romans 13 for this that, since authority is of the government, is given to them by God. Then authority is passed down from king to king to king, and that is their divine right to rule. Well, I mean, the founders of our country were a mix. A couple of them were deists, but most of them were Christians and they knew their Bible too.
Speaker 1:And they said no. Like governments have a specific, limited function, and when, essentially when they fail in that function, they forfeit their right to rule. And so the people themselves have the authority to reconstitute that government, to reshape it, to reform it in some way. People are not doomed to live under tyranny their entire lives. They have a moral authority, as image bearers, to stand up and say no, government, you are wrong, this is wrong, you need to change. And if enough of the people do, that change will be possible.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that's only within our government system, not other governments around the world. No, that's a universal truth, okay.
Speaker 1:Now that doesn't mean that it's practical all the time. Okay, time like okay it, if you need enough people to basically stand up to a totalitarian government and say, no, we're not gonna go any further than this. There's a really old German proverb, but that I really like. I learned this in my German class going through PhD work, but it says there's three things that can't be stopped Fire, the flood and the crowd. And if the crowd is big enough, it can't really be stopped. So anyway, just as a principle, the founders of our country in America were saying that governments, they have their authority. Like our rights come from God, like all human beings have innate natural, like our rights come from God, like all human beings have innate natural rights, and that comes from God too. And so governments are instituted by men to uphold these laws, these fundamental rights and laws, and when they don't do that, they are not fulfilling their function. And so the image bearers of God have a duty to reconstitute and reform that government. Now, practically, that's not always possible in a practical sense, but in a moral sense is what the founders of our country were saying. So I may be getting off on your question a little bit, but I think you said how should we? Uh, yeah, so the the implication of Romans 13 is that there's a limit, the government has limits, and when we see the government exceeding those limits, we have a moral duty in some way to address that. How we go about addressing it, to what extent we address it, can all be up for debate, but we have a moral duty to at least address it in some way. When the government is exceeding those boundaries Either exceeding the boundaries of the scope of its authority or negating its authority, like abdicating its authority to punish evil, as we see in some states around the country Okay, so in either case, when the government is not fulfilling its role or it's exceeding its role, people, not just Christians this is a universal moral duty People have a duty to say no, that's not your role, that's not your function. The scriptures inform us of that. So as Christians we can say look, we help people understand what that role of government is.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's sort of our role in society is to help governments understand their role, help other people hopefully, as we witness to them to understand this is the role of government. When a government does this properly, it's actually really good. And guess what? Guess how we know that God tells us Okay, yeah, yeah, there's, there's a limit. So we in our society, we have the privilege, we have the opportunity to voice that consent, mm-hmm or decent. In either case. We can do it through media, or we can do it through the ballot box Yep. Or, in extreme cases, we can do that through withdrawal and we get into arguments about when it's time to secede from the union and all that stuff, because that's a debate that's coming up these days. So you can either protest, you can vote vote, uh, you can argue or you can just withdraw.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, those are kind of the four main ones, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, um, when you were talking in the last one about the role of God and being to punish evil and then also to promote the good, one of the other questions that came up for me was well, what about the things that the government promotes that they're saying are good but are not good for because it goes against the teaching of the scripture? And I think that's what Christians are going to look at. They're going to say, well, the government is trying to push this on us, or is using our tax dollars for this. That's not good, or it goes against our beliefs as Christians. What do we do there, right? What happens in that situation? What do we do there, right? What happens in in that situation? How should christians respond to issues or laws that are being passed that contradict biblical teachings?
Speaker 1:yeah. So this is where christians need to be careful, okay, um, because the the government is not the church. So we can't expect the government to institute morality, all all forms of Christian morality. However, we can expect the government to institute basic forms of morality that are apparent in nature okay, that we can deduce through reasoning and natural law. So this is why it's important for Christians to understand the kind of arguments that they're making in the public square.
Speaker 1:If you're trying to make arguments that are biblical but you're just quoting the Bible and someone doesn't recognize the Bible as authority, they're just going to say well, you're just a Christian nut job, I'm not going to listen to you. But if you could make arguments that are biblical but don't rely necessarily on biblical references, I think they're going to be much more persuasive. So when we deal with issues like transgenderism, let's say, we can make rational arguments that we would say are rooted in natural law, but rooted in the created order that God made, that all image bearers have the capacity to recognize, have the moral duty to recognize. I would say, uh, we can make arguments to that effect. Um, there was a book I referenced long time ago in that very first episode on transgenderism. The book is called when harry met sally. Oh yeah, uh, by ryan t anderson.
Speaker 1:That's a perfect example of making natural law arguments in the public square, natural law arguments that are thoroughly biblical. It just doesn't rely on biblical references. Okay, so the Bible does inform us of basic morality, and even Christian morality Not that those two things are always distinct but the life of the church and how Christians are expected to live, uh, as sanctified people of God. But again, the government, its role, is primarily a negative role. It can do things that Christians can't do, namely kill people. Okay, okay, uh. So we, we need to be advising the government on the wise, prudent, righteous way to do that. Okay, so, I think that's when we I don't know if I'm answering your question- enough.
Speaker 2:How should we respond to this? From what you're saying is that we can respond with logical, cohesive arguments and not necessarily have to reference scripture, because it'll make listeners maybe, you know, not want to listen or just be more resistant to what we're trying to show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and rest assured, all truth is God's truth. Okay, and God created the world, he created the moral order of the universe. Okay, and um, people can only violate that natural moral order so long before nature bites back. Yeah, um, so just rest assured, uh, just because we're not quoting the Bible doesn't mean that we've neglected biblical authority, um, or that people won't get it, because all human beings are created in the image of God and we have.
Speaker 1:All human beings, even if they're not Christians, have a basic sense of morality. Their conscience bears witness against them. They at least know right from wrong, in a basic sense. Now, that can be darkened and other things, and so we need the help of the Holy Spirit to illuminate people's minds and hearts. But there's a very, um, I would say a very spirited, robust debate within christian circles, especially protestant circles, on the role of natural law, that, even even with a sense of like total depravity that human beings, even their mind, is affected by sin, they still understand basic forms of morality that are given to them in creation.
Speaker 1:And uh, I mean this is paul's argument in romans one when dealing with the issue of idolatry and homosexuality. Yeah, so when a government is exceeding its authority, let's say, or its government. It's calling good evil and evil good. That is when I think Christians, more than anyone else, have a responsibility to speak up and say no good is good, evil is evil. Now, how we do that? We need to do that with patience, with grace with accuracy, but we need to do that.
Speaker 2:We need to do that with patience, with grace, with accuracy, but we need to do that, okay, yeah, you know, one of the things that makes it challenging, I think, as I was thinking about that right now is that we have people who are, who call themselves Christians, but are advocating for things that are evil, and because those same people elect people, they're promoting the same thing.
Speaker 2:So we're kind of at this very interesting point in history. I mean, I'm assuming it's always, it's always been like this, but yeah, it's very interesting because it's causing more division, even within churches, which brings up another question is, you know, should the church be involved in Pothix or should they just be committed to? Hey, our job as a church and you mentioned this in the last episode is to preach the gospel, and you know, and and have people, um, accept Christ, right, so that's that's the to disciple nations, right, um, but because Pothix is such a huge part of people's, I don't know if identity or representation of their beliefs, there's always going to be a tie to it. So pastors, churches, they find different ways to get involved. Should they or should they just stick with the Bible and the gospel, and that is the only thing they should be teaching in their churches.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's certainly the approach of some people, but I think that's incorrect.
Speaker 2:Just to go all Bible and gospel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and totally avoid politics altogether. Okay, I think that reaction is based on some bad examples. We've seen where people over politicize things in church and it runs people away. But I think it's an oversimplification of our duty to society as Christians. Now, our primary function is to spread the gospel and to preach. That is absolutely our primary function, that is our. But to say that our primary function is our sole function is again a bit of a simplified reading of the scriptures. Simplified reading of the scriptures. Let me give you an example of this.
Speaker 1:Some people will go to Romans 13 or 1 Peter 2 and they will say look see, christians are just to obey the government, pay their taxes. We're to live quiet and peaceful lives. That's from 1 Thessalonians and we were to work with our hands. 1 Thessalonians and I think it's 1 Thessalonians, maybe 2. But we're to be basically peaceful, quiet citizens, go about our lives and we preach the gospel. We don't get involved in politics because the early Christians didn't get involved in politics. Okay, we don't see that in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:Paul didn't try to overturn slavery or anything like that. So they typically will make these kind of arguments. The problem is you have to understand these things in context. The Christian church is not in a position to change anything in the Roman Empire. They are spreading the gospel. They're trying to spread the gospel throughout the whole world. They are not in any sort of position of political power to enact any change whatsoever of position of political power to enact any change whatsoever. It would be completely reckless, maybe suicidal, for christians to try to do that when they're this small fledgling group of of people that largely the roman empire looks at as a jewish sect. For them to come around and be like all right, we're in charge.
Speaker 1:Now, like no more slavery. There was, there was a lot of slavery. Was the economy of the Roman empire? Okay, if Paul comes out and is like okay, like no more slaves. Guys, slaves, disobey your masters. You're a Christian. Now you know there's no other slave, nor, neither slave nor Greek, so don't worry about it. What's that? What that's going to do in the Roman empire? That's going to bring down the whole Roman Empire on Christians. So Paul has that in mind. Okay, now Paul says in the church hey, there's neither. When you come together as a body of believers, there's neither. You are to act as though there's neither slave nor free. Okay, Now getting back to modern society.
Speaker 1:People will read into the New Testament and they'll say look, new Testament, christians. They're not doing any social activism. Neither should we. But again, they're not in a position to do so. In fact, for the first three centuries of the church they weren't in a position to do that. Now they were.
Speaker 1:The church fathers, were writing about some things. They were writing to the emperors and trying to influence them. They, like Christians, we're good. We're trying to promote the empire. We're praying for the empire. We're actually good citizens. Please don't persecute us.
Speaker 1:Okay, but it wasn't until Constantine comes to power. And the Edict of Milan in 313 AD is when essentially all Christian persecution ends, christianity becomes legal and Constantine converts to Christianity and Christianity almost immediately sweeps into power in the Roman Empire and Constantine starts asking the bishops for advice. Ok, so imagine you go from like zero to hero overnight. Ok, you're a bishop Of a prominent church in the Roman Empire and all of a sudden the Roman, the emperor of Rome, is like I'm a Christian now, and he gets baptized. He's like all right, everyone, stop persecuting Christians. In fact, you Christians come over here to Rome and advise me. All right, if you're a Christian at this time.
Speaker 1:Now you are thrust into. You're thrust into a situation where you have to start thinking a little differently. You now have to start thinking about how do we advise the Roman government? Because before this time it was pagan, it was evil, it was opposing Christianity. So there were debates before Constantine came to power of whether Christians should serve in the military, because the Roman military was enacting the will of a pagan empire going around conquering lands. If you were a Christian, like, could you actually do that? And so there was debates about this in the early church. Yeah, when they come to power and Rome becomes officially Christian, well then that changes the nature of the debate, doesn't it? Now Christians have to start asking the question of when is violence justified? Yeah, Like so that's when you see the first instances of just war theory coming about with Augustine, which is about a century later. But Christians have to start answering these questions.
Speaker 1:I say all that to say this in our modern society, we find ourselves in a situation that's qualitatively different than the first century or the first three centuries. We are not subjects of a tyrannical emperor that's going around killing Christians. We're not even Christians of a Christian empire. We're Christians in a democratic society where we vote to determine not just the people who lead us, but what they say and what they do. Okay, that's a qualitatively different situation. So just because the New Testament Christians weren't social activists, just because they weren't talking about politics and how to influence the government, doesn't mean that we can't or ought not to Now, when it comes to church, what is the place of politics in the church? Well, if you're using your pulpit as a partisan billy club to endorse your candidates, well, actually that's illegal in our country right now is to endorse candidates from the pulpit. It wasn't always illegal, I know, I was just going to ask about that yeah, so the Johnson Amendment, which I think is unconstitutional in my own opinion.
Speaker 1:I'm curious if it's going to get overturned, the Johnson Amendment, eventually.
Speaker 2:It would be interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you're using the pulpit to be a partisan politicker and say that well, my candidate's the best, and blah, blah, blah, and you're driving people away from hearing the gospel, you're missing the point and you're misusing your office. However, if you're teaching people what the proper role of a government is and using wisdom to discern good leaders from bad leaders, that's a. That's a legitimate function of a pastor or the elders of a church. To disciple people in the wisdom of how to influence their society for good, absolutely Okay. Now we we wouldn't get into the. We can't get into the practicalities of that, but in principle, your pastors who are listening, or lay people, maybe you're listening and you want to talk to your pastor about this.
Speaker 1:The pastor has a responsibility to disciple people in the ways of godliness and as Christians, we find ourselves in a situation where even outsiders expect us to have some sort of opinion on the direction of our country.
Speaker 1:They sometimes look to us and say what would you guys think? Okay, like, if the president were to call you up, pastor, and ask your opinion about something, what would you say to him? That that is essentially what the Christians found themselves in in Constantine's era. But we don't have that situation where the president may not be calling you up but you have a right to vote and that right to vote is a privilege to exercise at least a little bit of influence in society to try to push it in the right direction. If you know the purpose of government and the roles of government the limited role of government and you see society moving away from that and promoting a government that wants to call evil good and good, evil Right right, a government that wants to institute economic policies that are crazy, you know, or really unjust, you have a responsibility to vote to try to influence that in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 2:That's good. That's good, yeah, to kind of close this out. So what do you say to, or what do we say to, christians who are not voting? And we saw this a lot in the last election, where a lot of Christians decided not to be a part of the process, where they say, well, you know, I'm choosing the lesser of two evils and just not to vote. And so there's this, this engagement from the process, when we have the privilege and we have the freedom and the ability to put someone as a leader for our country. So what do we say to those who decide not to? Is it wrong or is it a sin for them not to be engaged in the process?
Speaker 1:Let me clarify what I said earlier. When I said you have a responsibility to vote. You don't necessarily have a responsibility to or a duty to vote, but you do have a responsibility to, to influence society in the right direction. Voting, I think, is a matter of conscience. Okay, not that any candidate is of equal moral standing, okay, but I don't put on people this burden of you have to vote, okay, I think whether you choose to vote or not is a matter of conscience. However, if you don't want to vote, usually it's because they they're like. My conscience doesn't allow me to endorse either of these candidates, to give my voice to them, so I just won't give my voice to any of them.
Speaker 1:That, in and of itself, is an act of political, is a political act in and of itself. Usually, those people are pretty vocal about that, you know, and that's, I think, perfectly legitimate for Christians to do is to say, hey, I actually think our country's headed in a disastrous direction and neither of these people are going to fix it. So we actually need to move in a different direction. This is a mistake. People are going to fix it. So we actually need to move in a different direction. This is a mistake. So I don't think that a Christian has the duty to vote for the lesser of two evils. Some Christians think it's morally prudent to vote for the lesser of two evils, because politics is a business of compromising. You don't always get what you want and one candidate is clearly going to be more favorable to evangelical Christianity, let's say, than the other one.
Speaker 1:There's also one party that's definitely not perfect and definitely has a lot of problems, but is not engaging in outright evil that we would, uh, that we would see in the other party. Yeah. So I don't want to give voice to this idea that the Republicans and the Democrats in our country are, um, of moral equivalency. I don't think that at all. Um, uh. It just says some cultures can be way far away from biblical morality and the morality of the created order. I think some political parties can be just totally like off their rocker and gone. I think, in my opinion, I don't mean I'm not endorsing the Republicans here, I'm not endorsing Trump, but the Democratic democratic party at least is engaged. I mean it's not the same democratic party even 30 years ago, 40 years ago. I mean they are outright engaged and endorsing things that are, I mean, just evil. Yeah, like uh promoting transgender ideologies for children um and I'll tell you the parents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they had an abortion clinic right outside the DNC this year First time ever. I mean this, these kinds of things. If you have spiritual eyes to see this, you you understand the demonic nature of these things. There is no moral equivalency to be drawn between that and whatever foibles the Republicans find themselves in. These are not morally equivalent things. So it's, it's a bit of a, it's really lazy and sometimes dishonest for people to draw that moral equivalency. It's not that you can't have objections to what the Republicans put up or who their candidates are, but to draw a moral equivalency, I think, is really lazy and and or just dishonest, disingenuous. So I'm probably going to label it some partisan there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and I will share this just because I don't know if I'm going to touch it on the next episode but one of the things that you, that you don't want to do, so obviously right now we talked about, okay, what's the Christian's role in the process, you know, does a Christian have a duty to vote or not vote, and so on.
Speaker 2:But one thing that I will push back against is this idea that you can be a Christian or that, as a Christian, you're going to be advocating for things that are immoral.
Speaker 2:And the clearest example of that is, you know, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, a Steph Curry, very well-known basketball player, very popular, when he was asked, you know, are you, you know who are you voting for in this election? And he said who he was voting for. He said the primary reason okay, and he has professed it open, very openly, that he's a Christian, but very openly, he also says the reason why I'm voting for this person is because they are, they are going to give women choice, obviously, referring to the choice to having an abortion. So those are clear things that you see, you're like how do you reconcile those two things? You can't right, and there's many examples of people who are, who have cultural influence and who would say, hey, I'm a Christian and I'm voting for for this person for this specific reason. So, things that are immoral, things that you mentioned right now in the podcast, things that we know go against scripture, like those things they just do not align. So I always push back against, against those things you.
Speaker 1:Here's how they rationalize it. Just to I want to steel man their argument and then we can knock it down. They will rationalize something like abortion by saying like someone like steph curry, who claims to be an evangelical christian and he's like I, yeah, I'm endorsing kamala because the right it's, you know, the right of women is like the primary reason for this. Okay, here's how they rationalize it. Usually is that they'll say I'm personally pro-life, okay, right, but I don't think that the government has any right over a woman's body. Now, if you have listened to our abortion episodes, you know how fallacious that argument is. Okay, but let's just take this back to Romans 13 for a minute. Yeah, and we're asking the question whether abortion falls under the purview of the government or not. Well, we have to ask ourselves what abortion is.
Speaker 1:If abortion is the terminating, the intentional, violent terminating, of an unborn life in the womb, a human being in the womb, if we're saying, if we as Christians believe that that is a human being, therefore it's an image bearer, okay, therefore it has a right to life, or another way to put it, no other human being has a right to take that innocent life. Only governments have the right to take life and it's not innocent life they have the right to take, they have authority to take the life of evil doers. Okay, if that's the case. And human society? Genesis 9 has the responsibility to curb the violent excesses of human beings, including capital punishment. So we're to prevent murder, like, if you follow my, my track here, human societies.
Speaker 1:One of their primary functions is to stop murder governments. One of the most evil things someone can do is take the life of another human being. If a government has that basic function and we are saying that the unborn is a human being, what does that say for the role of a government on the issue of abortion? Ought the government to allow for the taking of an innocent human life? No, no, yeah. So really, it all comes down to how you define the unborn. And if you define it as a human being, an innocent life, then as a Christian you would be compelled by scripture to say oh yeah, the government actually has a duty to protect that unborn life.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's good, tim, that's really good. I'm glad you added that. No, no going around it with the idea of you being personally pro-life, but then saying that the role of government shouldn't be to stop to allow for people to have abortions, right, that they need to stop that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can understand. This is a really simple analogy. I'm personally against theft, right, but I don't think the government has any role in the business. I don't know what to do. We would obviously be like what? That's crazy, right, right, right. Okay then why? Oh, because human beings have a right to property. They have a right to their stuff. Well, if human beings have a right to that, they have a right to life too, right, right, if the unborn is a human being. Well, there we are.
Speaker 2:That's Good way to close, brother. Good way to close, yeah. So I think we did a very good job of kind of demonstrating, you know, how the role of the Christian should be in addressing these different issues, and I really liked that last example that you gave. So that was really really good. So hopefully you guys have been enjoying this series and we'll come back with another episode next time. See you guys, then.
