#138 Rhett McLaughlin - How to Save Christianity From Christians

25:40I didn't, I thought that was BS, right? And I didn't even take a lot of time thinking about it, but I was using reason and logic to be like, well, this is probably some emotional experience or whatever. And it's like, they're still Christians. They're still in the fold. Catholics, I don't know about them. Yeah. And even other, have you known about this rainbow body stuff? Rainbow body. So this is fascinating. Dale Allison talks about this. I had never heard about it, but -

26:05Alex O'Connor:Wait, I have heard of this. Tell me about this. It's in Tibetan Buddhism. Yeah. And there is this idea that if you are a very enlightened individual, like fully realized, I guess like Dalai Lama level, that when you die, your body transforms into light directly. And so what they observe is that the body gets smaller and smaller. And I think they call it rainbow body because you'll see a rainbow like wherever they're entombed or whatever, there's like a rainbow that's coming out of it as they transform into light. Yeah. And the only thing left is a lot of times hair, teeth and fingernails. And, of course, if you don't have a reason to believe that, then you're like, well, that doesn't happen.

26:50That's not real.

26:51Alex O'Connor:And people are probably thinking that didn't happen, even if that's the first time they've ever heard of this. If you're a Christian listening, you've probably gone like, oh, yeah, well, you haven't looked into it. You don't know what the evidence is. I'm sure there's a wealth of great attestations. But it kind of doesn't matter because that obviously didn't happen. Right. There's a Catholic, I need to read more about this, but there's a Catholic, I think a Catholic priest, who went to spend time, like in the last hundred years. spent time over there and investigated these claims directly. And basically says, I interviewed all these people.

27:27I don't know if he saw it for himself, but he's like talking to all these people. And he's like, this is very, very well attested. It doesn't seem like a hoax. It doesn't seem like something they're making up. He was actually trying to make a parallel between rainbow body and the resurrection. Right. Interestingly, and I don't, again, I don't want to speak too much on it because I don't know too much about it. But if the central claim of Christianity was rainbow body, Jesus, rainbow body, which that would really confuse things with the pride flag. What do we do at that point? Reclaiming the rainbow for Christ.

27:58Yeah. But like, if that was the central claim of Christianity, that would be the thing that apologists are defending. But we're not even considering it. We don't even know about it. It's something that there's like this tertiary knowledge of it. And I just think that, again, you're digging in. And again, if you look at like Muslim apologetics, which I've looked at a little bit, but there's certain miracles. Oh, yeah. And it's just like you see kind of a one to one apologetics channels that if you if you want to find those of like defense of things like the splitting of the moon and things like that, that like it just feels very, very similar.

28:37So anyway, I think the point is, is that it seems that according to the way that Jesus talks about it, the way that Paul talks about it, that if you make a decision, like this is happening on a spiritual plane. And this decision that you make to believe in the resurrection is not because it's the most plausible thing, not because it's the most reasonable thing, and because it's not, it really isn't, right? Right. Paul Agia has got a great video and a great theory on this called the minimal witnesses hypothesis, which I think is a great. You know, I love the guy and I think it's a great channel.

29:11But basically saying that, like, here, here's a natural explanation for how the church started. That is plausible. Now, do we know that that's what happened? No, we don't have the level of insight that we can have into these events. But you can choose to believe. I think it's just I was ultimately what I'm asking for, I think, is just just embrace the fact that it's a faith. And if you're saying that you believe this in faith because you trust God, and then there's a legitimate spiritual transformation that takes place, why is that not a good enough argument? Why do we have to get into using reason and logic?

29:44Because for me, I was told it was true because it was reasonable. When I found out it wasn't reasonable, I concluded that it wasn't true. Yeah.

29:52Alex O'Connor:It sort of sets up the way in which it could be falsified. because like if your belief is that this has to essentially be grounded in empirical evidence or rationality then if it if you discover that actually the case isn't as good as you thought it was and you know so it's not for us to say that it's definitely unreasonable or that there is no evidence but even just on a practical level if somebody becomes convinced that the arguments they heard from an apologist that made them think about christianity actually aren't as well founded if that's what brought them into the church then that's what will send them right out again.

30:26Alex O'Connor:It's the same hand that leads you in also pulls you out. And so in that case, is it not better to ground Christianity in what historically people have claimed is the most important part about your relationship with God, which is the experience, the faith, the personal commitment to a relationship with Jesus, that kind of stuff. And yeah, you're right. If you look closely, the Bible is constantly talking about... I mean, there's a passage where it talks about how you sort of shouldn't be fooled by philosophy. Yeah. You know? Because there was a lot of sophisticated Greek philosophy that Paul was running into.

31:03Yeah. And they were, you know, this is the beginning. He was like the heyday of this Greek thought. And he understood it. And he was basically saying, if we get into thinking like these guys, it's going to lead us away. The resurrection will be foolish if I'm using this as my paradigm. Yeah.

31:19Alex O'Connor:Isn't that interesting? Like if we were sort of trying to sort of argue in this way, the resurrection would be foolish. Well, in so many ways, that's what a modern atheist on Reddit says, isn't it? Like, you know, the resurrection is foolish according to reason and rationality. And in a way, as a Christian, you could say, yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't that be, you know, jujitsu? You know, I can't remember. It means something like literally like, I wish I remember this, but in jujitsu, and I'm not. I was a yellow belt in karate. Yeah, right. But like the idea that you use the momentum of your opponent and you don't necessarily use your strength and you don't dig in, but if they're coming hard this way and you kind of let them go past you and you flip them or whatever.

31:58Yeah. But exactly like the skeptics are saying, this is a foolish thing to believe. As a Christian, why can't you say, yeah, it is? Yeah. But try it. Yeah. Like, what would that be like, right? Versus, no, no, it's not, no, no, no, no, it's reasonable. Let me show you, here's the historical evidence. It's just like, and then you're like, The historical evidence is real thin, guys. And there's very few Christians who are willing to admit that. Dale Allison is my favorite of all of them because he is willing to admit that he has made a faith decision because you can't look into this cloud of history and come to a confident conclusion.

32:37He's phenomenal.

32:38Alex O'Connor:I just, I had him on my show, I think between seeing you last and now. I think I hadn't had him on when I last. Oh, wow. I found him on the show. So great episode. He's also one of my favorites. I mean, his book on the resurrection, I think we said this last time, is like the, it's like, I always want to say it's the only book you need to read on the resurrection, including the Bible. You can read the introduction and adopt that way of thinking and you save yourself a lot of pain. I often find that like, I was speaking to a biblical scholar friend of mine recently, and he was sort of like, you know, sometimes I feel like I enjoy reading about the Bible more than I enjoy reading the Bible.

33:13Alex O'Connor:It's like, yeah, me too, man. Yeah, I get that. But yeah, I spoke to John Lennox on the show as well. And one of the things that I spoke with him about was that if you believe that Christianity is based on rational argumentation, it may be that Christianity or theism in general can be supported by evidence. maybe the complexity of a biological cell points to God or language or whatever. The problem is that if you think that that is what you need to ground the faith, that's what you need to get the faith going, then what this does is it creates an intellectual barrier for entry. It means that if you are not smart enough to understand the Kalam cosmological argument, if you don't know how premises lead to conclusions, if you don't know the difference between deductive and inductive logic, then you're not going to be a Christian.

34:07Alex O'Connor:And because this is the way that Christianity is supposed to be proven to people, if you don't understand historical methodology, if you don't understand what a criterion of embarrassment is, if you're not smart enough to work that out, then sorry, mate, Christianity isn't for you, which is sort of unthinkable. When put in those terms, it is completely unthinkable that that is what Christianity would be about. So this isn't to say that there aren't good arguments you can make and good evidences that you can discuss. But the idea that that is like the way in and that that is the reason for your faith, I think is a mistake, at least as a practical measure for trying to bring other people.

34:46Alex O'Connor:And it's not biblical. Yeah, that's right. You're supposed to become like a child. That's right. Yeah. And so to me, it just feels like a temptation, a human temptation that Christians have fallen for. To be like, well, no, no, I need to make this reasonable. It's just like, do you trust God? You don't really have to make this make sense from a human standpoint. Does it make sense from a spiritual standpoint in your particular experience? And you know, it's interesting because some people, some Christian listeners might be thinking of of romans chapter one in romans chapter one paul says uh that like sort of god and his invisible qualities have been known for all time without excuse people are without excuse i can't remember the the exact exact phrasing maybe we can find it or put it up on screen um and some people will listen to that and go like oh well it says that you know like god can be known through like sort of the world that we live in and and but the fact that it says that no one is is with excuse that every single person knows god's existence also i think implies that whatever it is that paul is talking about there the kind of thing which sort of guarantees that anyone can know god cannot be some complicated syllogism or you know biological observation through a microscope or something like that it has to be something that is just present in every single person naturally.

36:14Alex O'Connor:And that's not going to be something like apologetical argumentation. Yeah. And even with that passage, if you think about - What is that? Can I borrow your Bible while you're talking? If you think about what - Pass the Bible on the left-hand side. If you think about who Paul was writing to and what they understood, Yes. I think someone in the first century was without excuse because there was no explanation at all for reality apart from a personal God in many ways, right? The modern world only made... Oh, sorry. Now you just revealed that this is Diet Dr. Pepper that you're drinking. Oh, it's whiskey.

36:51Alex O'Connor:Can we get a tissue? Is that really bad? No, no, no. This is a proper whopper table. You know who sits at this table on a regular basis? Link Neal. If this table is Link Neal proof, it's Dr. Pepper proof. you were saying? I was saying that at the time that Paul was writing, I do think it would have been unreasonable and stupid to be like, there's nothing behind this. Yes. I'm looking at Romans chapter one, verse 18, but I'm skipping forward importantly to verse 20 here. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse yeah it's odd reading it in the esv yeah but it's it seems to imply that it's got something to do with the actual world it's not just like this internal thing it is something about like looking at the world and his invisible qualities are present and they're somehow but the fact to me the important thing is that he says that they're without excuse like that every person um have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world implies, again, that whatever it is, it can't be complicated, and it can't require a great deal of reflective thought.

38:09Alex O'Connor:Yeah, this is plain, essentially. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I do, I mean, I still have a lot of Christians say that to me today. It's like, isn't it obvious? Isn't it obvious? Look at the sunset. Isn't it obvious that there's a God? And And I'm like, well, there are parts of me that are very, that are very, you know, that makes sense to me that there is this beautiful creation. There is this beautiful world. And that it very well could be the case that there's something or someone behind it. But it could also be that that someone is in it. And this is just inherent in the nature of the way that this works, you know, like some sort of pantheist idea.

38:53I just don't think I can I'm not going to figure it out That's how I respond to that I'm like yeah that's cool and maybe that's the case And I see how that if you're a Christian Then this is kind of a bedrock Philosophical idea And I respect that and I'm not trying to get somebody To question that But it's not Even if we came to that conclusion We might at best Arrive at deism Life is full of choices But the choice between getting crispy chicken nuggets or a Crunchwrap slider isn't one you'll have to make. The new Crispy Chicken Crunchwrap Slider at Taco Bell. All white meat chicken nuggets, breaded in tortilla chips, wrapped up, sauce and all, inside a slider-sized Crunchwrap.

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39:49Alex O'Connor:Yeah. You know, I would really like to see the extent to which this revival, the people who are sort of going back to church, particularly young people, if I could like interview them on the way in and ask them like, what is bringing you here? Like specifically, like I really doubt that they would say, you know, I listened to this lecture by William Lane Craig and he was talking about the nature of causation and the penny dropped. Some people, maybe, sure. But I would just presume that it's much more experiential. It's much more personal. It's much more subjective. I think that it is a sense of belonging.

40:29Alex O'Connor:Yeah. And you know what the Enlightenment did, in my view? You know what the scientific method does? I talk about this all the time in the context of consciousness, which I won't get into. If you've got your sort of Alex O 'Connor bingo cards at home, there's consciousness. We still need to do the Gnostics, and I need to talk about triangles in the head. Right. But I talk about it when it comes to consciousness because my friend Philip Goff wrote a book called Galileo's Error. He's a big panpsychist. He believes that science can't explain consciousness. And Galileo's error was like mathematizing the world in such a way that it just precluded talk of consciousness.

41:05Alex O'Connor:Galileo said that mathematics is the language of the universe. And as a scientist, that makes sense. Yeah, I can describe physical operations and stuff all in the language of maths. The problem is that by defining the universe in that way, you've excluded anything which cannot be described with mathematics, essentially. And you kind of get a bit of the same problem here, which is that what science does is it moves you from the subjective to the objective, from internal to external. The purpose of science is to say, like, I'm seeing a table right now, a stained table right now. You're seeing a stained table right now.

41:39Alex O'Connor:It's going to dry. It's drying as we speak. but you know our perspective of how it's drying and the shape of the stain and all that kind of it's very different you know you're seeing a different image literally to me so what does science do it says if somehow we could like step outside of ourselves and see the table for what it really is as opposed to how i'm interacting with the table and how you're interacting with the table that's what the purpose of science is it's like yeah you have that experience and you have that experience but what's really going on what's the actual nature of stuff so it moves out but if faith is supposed to be personal and subjective and individual and inward, then this approach of stepping outside of yourself and trying to see the world for how it really is absent any personal considerations is like inappropriate.

42:25It's like stepping up to the gates of heaven with the wrong key. Yeah.

42:29Alex O'Connor:Yeah. You know, it's just like, well, I believe this because it's the most reasonable thing and it was proven to me. Yeah. And I also find it very difficult to believe that you would get to the pearly gates and God would sort of say to you, do you think that this argument is valid or what's your sort of historical belief in it? It really feels like that wouldn't be at the forefront of anyone's attention when it came to it. Which is why I think this reading of Doubting Thomas is really interesting. And in fact, there's a bit of a conspiracy theory here that the reason why the Christian world was insistent on depicting Thomas physically touching Jesus was because it was this great answer to the Enlightenment.

43:15Alex O'Connor:Like here's the empirical proof that Thomas has and sort of the physicality of Jesus and all that kind of stuff. But if Thomas never touches the wounds, then what actually happens? Well, Thomas says, when he hears about Jesus, he says, I would like to see evidence. I want to touch him. I want to thrust my hand into his side. Then Jesus shows up and meets him and says, I'm here. Come and touch me. At which point Thomas just like drops to his knees and says, my Lord and my God. there's a reading of this which because it doesn't narrate him touching the wounds there's a reading that says that what happened was thomas demanded evidence wanted evidence but when he actually met jesus he instantly just realized how like silly that was and was like oh gosh you know my lord and my god you know and jesus is like blessed because you you know you believe because you've seen not touched seen yeah right you believe because you're painting the painting it was interpreted too much yeah it's it's interesting to think about this is a little meta, but it's almost like if the story is a later, it's in John, so it's one of the last things.

44:21And it's like John is responding to some of the things and some of the critiques that have come along. And this importance of the bodily resurrection, which you don't see in Mark, has suddenly become central to the beliefs. And now that's a part of this. It's almost like even within the Bible itself, they're already responding in the wrong way. That's a little rabbit hole.

44:45Alex O'Connor:Yeah, because I mean, like some people think that John's gospel being the latest was written with some kind of polemical intention. That there were things going on in the early church community that John's gospel is written in order. I mean, my favorite example to talk about here is always John the Baptist. because in John's gospel, it's like, you know, there was the first person named in the gospels, unless you count the word in the gospel of John, is John the Baptist. You know, there was a man called John who was not the Messiah and he was preparing the way for the Messiah because he himself was not the Messiah.

45:15Alex O'Connor:He was just making way for the Messiah. And then John, who was not the Messiah, it's like really wants you to know. Yeah, just so you know. Some people came and they asked him, are you the Messiah? And he said, no, I'm not the Messiah. Why would you think that? It's like, okay, what? And it seems to be that there were people who believe that John the baptist was the messiah so this is sort of a polemical attempt to re-establish you know jesus's position as the main guy some people think of similar things going on with like the emergence of gnostic there it is bingo uh gnostic christian sects in the early church that believe that jesus is this like ephemeral spiritual apparition kind of and it's like no no we're gonna we're gonna emphasize jesus's physicality with the where he you know is physically presenting himself to the disciples.

45:57Alex O'Connor:And so, yeah, it's not quite clear that this actually happened. It also only shows up in John's gospel, the story of doubting Thomas. And also it seems to serve some theological purpose, which is a lot of, I didn't realize this for the longest time. I can't remember exactly where I learned about it, but you know, when Jesus says, anyone who's seen me has seen the father, who is he responding to when he says that he's responding to Philip. And a lot of people know, oh, well, it's because Philip asks, you know, Jesus, when are we going to get to see the father? And Jesus says, anyone who's, Philip, don't you know how long you've been with me?

46:32Alex O'Connor:Anyone who's seen me has seen the father. But Philip doesn't actually start that conversation. It's Thomas that starts the conversation. Thomas asks Jesus something, at which point Jesus then says the famous, you know, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. At which point Philip asks, when do we get to see the father? And then he He says, anyone who's seen me has seen the Father. So it's interesting that at the end of the gospel, it's Thomas who sees Jesus and says, my Lord and my God, as if he's finally understood the answer to his question earlier, that anyone who sees me has seen the Father.

47:05Alex O'Connor:He's got a good narrative. Yeah. So there's a lot of theological motivation. So whether it happened historically, in a way, you kind of want to say, who cares? We're never going to know. There's good reason to think that it did happen. It's not historical, but maybe it was. Who knows? but what's the message here? Like, what are we, what are we being like told by the story? And I don't think there's a very easy way to read this as like very pro enlightenment. Let's put it that way. And I think this, you know, like, I think that I'm speaking to an audience who believes that it's the inspired word of God, that it's, it's all, it's all true.

47:41And so I'm like, okay, well, if you do believe that, then how does that actually impact the way that you think about this? because I think that Christian apologetics has actually done a lot of harm. Maybe, I feel like the apologetics is this double-edged sword because there's a lot of people who, first of all, there's a lot of people who never think about their faith from an introspective way and there's never any kind of self-critique. Those people don't have any use for apologists. Their pastor may occasionally preach a sermon that gets into apologetics, but they're just like, yeah, yeah, I know it's true.

48:13You don't really have to convince me. Then there's people who start asking questions and the apologetics answers are satisfying and that's it. That's, they don't dig deeper. I think it is useful for those people, but for the people, and again, I think the church wants to keep these people, the most curious and the most thoughtful who are like, well, let me look into the answers that I'm being given. And then that's when things begin to fall apart. And I just think they're being led down a road where they're being asked to really think about this very deeply versus experience this deeply spiritual.

48:48And so, yeah, we could talk about that point forever. We can move to the next point.

48:53Alex O'Connor:Yeah. Well, yeah, let's move on. But I think I mentioned earlier this quote about philosophy being, it's Colossians chapter two, verse eight, which perhaps you can find in this Bible and read out just because I think this is essentially in summary, like what we're talking about here. And I think it's summarized perfectly well there. Yeah. So it says, Colossians 2.8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Again, this is the same. He's just like hitting the same message again.

49:30Alex O'Connor:Yeah. And I think that the most important part of that is the human tradition. Yeah. Right. It's like, and I don't actually know what the word philosophy would have meant to Paul. like it probably would have meant something quite different to to what we mean um i mean philosophy being a greek term like love of wisdom philo and sophia um i would presume that it was literally the same word being used in the greek there but like we don't know exactly what it meant but it quite clearly is talking about like human tradition human thought human ways of thinking don't be held captive by them and okay when you first hear that it's like don't be held captive in the sense that like i've captivated you with a with a you know sophistic argument that's not really actually true you can also read this as like don't be held captive by it and that even if it's sort of even if it works even if it's accurate even if it's like helping you to spread the message it will keep you captive in the sense that now you've defined the terms that you have to play by such that if somebody's got a good reason against your faith or if someone's got you know a doubt of your historical methodology or something, well, you've made that bed and now you have to defend it on those terms.

50:36Alex O'Connor:Don't be held captive by this approach. And I think that's a wonderful summary of just what we've been talking about. And it's the opposite. He's saying to be, you know, this is according to Christ, not according to, you know. So I think that, again, it's not like, hey, this is not that good of an idea. It's like, no, this is actually counter to like, because if you, if, if Jesus is real, if the spirit is real, there's real transformation that's happening. Like you're literally becoming a new creation. If those things are happening, then you see how the human philosophy, tradition and reason just pales in comparison.

51:14It's like, it's like, if I do a magic trick, if I do a literal magic trick, and then you're like, well, explain how that happened. I'm like, it's magic, man. Like I, If I explain to you how it happened, I'm taken away from the magic of it. It's almost like what you're saying when you really buy into the explanation is that you don't believe in magic. Yes. Yeah. What is it?

51:37Alex O'Connor:What is it Lewis said? C.S. Lewis said, I believe in Christianity for the same reason I believe in the sun. Not just because I can see it, but because by it, I can see everything else. He had some good ones. He's got some bangers. He's got some bangers. Okay. Moving on. We've done one. So yeah. Yeah. This is first, this middle one is really fast and actually doesn't rely on the Bible. I mean, I'm sure we could find some verses that support this idea, but it's embrace truth, right? Again, we talked a little bit about this last time. I think the biggest example of this being that the church has a truth problem is that at least within the United States, depending on what poll you look at, but about 60 % of the church does not believe in evolution.

52:27They think that humans were created in their current form. And this is the crazy thing, right? That is a controversial statement. To say that the church has a truth problem because the majority of them don't believe in evolution. And I can see the comments just rolling in right now that evolution is just a theory. There are no transitional fossils. Every mutation is detrimental. Evolution is falling apart. Even the evolutionists don't believe in it and they're fighting all the time and the mechanisms don't work and all this stuff, all these platitudes and tired things. The fact that these, I like to call them high confidence, low information people, which that's a great recipe for leaving a YouTube comment.

53:12It makes it irresistible. The fact that what I'm saying right now, that being stated as a truth problem is just evidence of the truth problem. Because this is, again, I'm not going to give a case for evolution. Lots of people have done that. But this is the most well-attested fact of the natural world. It's the only way that we can make sense of what we actually see, including the human. Like a lot of people are like, I believe in some sort of evolution, but humans are separate from that. Well, that doesn't, you can't do that. Humans are part of it. Very clearly, there's no, there's no like qualitative difference.

53:51And it's very clear that we are related to all animals. Why is this such a big deal? Well, because anyone who actually, and I use this as a litmus test, and listen, I'm gonna sound a little bit like an asshole when I say this. I understand that because if you're coming from a certain worldview where you think this is not true, the disinformation campaign that the church has successfully pulled off to make people misunderstand evolution and think that it is incompatible with their faith or it's just not true. It's been so successful that it kind of makes talking about it this really controversial thing.

54:25But the thing is, is that if you don't believe in evolution, I know one of two things. Number one, which is most common is you really don't understand what evolution is and you don't understand the evidence for it, right? Or number two, you do understand it, but yet you hold to a dogma so tightly that can't let it in that you find some way to have this cognitive dissonance where you can kind of push it to the side, right? And again, that will be insulting to a lot of people. And I apologize for that because I know it's not a question of intelligence. It's a question of dogma and a question of misinformation.

55:02But the crazy thing about this is that Jessica Lipston And I talked about this before, this idea that people are like, why is this such a big deal to you? Because there's plenty of Christians who believe in evolution. Why did you let this affect you so much? And I try to be clear, and I'll say it again, I didn't stop being a Christian because of evolution, because there's plenty of, C.S. Lewis, there's plenty of Christians who believe in evolution. But what it did for me is it caused me to develop a trust problem with the most powerful voices in the faith who were leading me through some of these issues and helping me think about them.

55:35I see. And the interesting thing is that some of the most prominent apologetics voices today, people who have a lot of traction on YouTube, they readily admit they believe in evolution because they are familiar with the evidence and they understand that it's not a controversial thing. It's not like, well, you could, they know that it's true, but it's such a consequential truth that if you have the majority of people in your church not believing it, that represents a really significant truth problem. And I just don't know why more of them are not shouting it from the rooftops of like, we got to get this right.

56:12Like we have to accept this fact. If we're going to move forward in the long term, we have to accept this fundamental fact about reality. And so, and I think there's some downstream effects, like in your conversation on Diary of a CEO with Greg Kukul. Kukul. Kukul. Again, we're doing the same thing. You can't talk about somebody with a weird name without saying it wrong.

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57:18You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian, Sunrise, and Vice Guava. And they all bring the monster energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more. I think you say it's focal or co-fal. I think it's the American way. You kind of got into, which is inevitable a lot of times with an apologist, a little bit of the moral argument, right? We're talking anytime a skeptic says anything about right or wrong, there's this appeal to, well, what's your basis for that? And then we're into the moral argument.

57:57But there's an interesting thing related to this that a lot of times they end up having to dismiss the evidence for the development of ethics and morality in humans. So you've got these precursory moral intuitions that you see in non-human primates. So you see empathy and you see sharing and you see these other things. We have a good natural explanation for the nature of morality as it exists in humans. But that research has to be dismissed because that can't be true because animals don't actually have precursory morality. They might have some kind of common gray. I don't know how it's explained, really.

58:39but what I'm getting at is that not accepting this core truth, you end up not accepting other truths. Like now we can't really talk about ethics in a meaningful way without just appealing to, there's some objective objective standard that God has given us. And that's where morality comes from. And it's like, well, actually, if you look at the latest research, we've got really good reason to believe that these moral intuitions evolved.

59:02Alex O'Connor:Well, what do you think is the resistance then, if there are so many Christians who accept evolution and seem to not have too much issue with that, why is there such a cultural resistance within popular Christianity in America to this idea that we share a common ancestor? Well, I think one thing is trying to reconcile it with Genesis. So I think that, and I would say specifically reconciling it with the fall. I think original sin and the fall are theologically very important. Yeah, that's true. So like Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller, we talked a lot about this. He like accepted evolution. And again, I read a lot of these guys when my faith was floundering because I was like, well, there's a lot of really smart guys that believe evolution, but how do they reconcile it?

59:47I wasn't satisfied. Again, I was operating completely in reason and logic. I wasn't satisfied. I didn't feel like there was an actual great explanation for this. There's like, oh, well, you know, we know from genetics that we probably only got down to about 10 ,000. people, I can't remember the exact number, but like we never got down to two people, even like the mitochondrial Eve and the, like the, the Adam, the literal Adam and Eve, like the male and female who are the progenitors of the human race. They didn't live at the same time, but like there's a male that everybody's related to. And there's a female that's everybody is related to, but they were at different times, like according to genetics.

1:00:24And it's kind of interesting to look into that. But I think it's hard to reconcile what you see in the Bible when you're like, well, I'm gonna start taking this account literally, and I'm gonna take the entire Pentateuch literally, and I'm gonna look at the flood story and all this stuff. And so I think there is a real reticence to just be like, guys, all of this part of the Bible, this early part of the Bible is a polemic against the Mesopotamian myths that they were exposed to. The creation story itself is taking the same imagery, the chaotic waters, the separating the waters from the waters, the formation of people from clay, but it's taking those things that were understood culturally and it's resetting it in a monotheistic framework.

1:01:11The flood story is clearly dependent on earlier Mesopotamian myths, right? But I think that people start getting, and there's progressive Christians who accept this, but people start getting really, really scared because then that's when things seem, You can't walk out of that exercise with a belief in inerrancy.

1:01:31Alex O'Connor:Well, you know, but it's not like it's like modern response to modern science that we need to reinterpret Genesis. I've talked about this a bunch on the show. Like people have thought that Genesis is non-literal as long as Christianity has been a thing. Like church fathers thought that Genesis was not literal. I mean, one of the big reasons for not thinking things are literal is just because a lot of the time these stories don't make sense. Like, you know, there's some discussion about the temptation in the desert in the Gospels, for example. And Satan takes Jesus to the top of the mountain and shows in the whole world, right?

1:02:08Alex O'Connor:Yeah, yeah, we are going to get on to that. He says, like, essentially that you can see the whole world. And early Christians looked at the story and thought, well, you can't see the entire world from the top of a mountain. Even if the world is flat, you couldn't see all of it. That's not possible. So this story must be some kind of metaphor. And it was as easy as that, right? Like biblical literalism of the kind that thinks that the earth is 6 ,000 years old and Adam and Eve were... Well, maybe not in the Adam and Eve case, but certainly in terms of the creation narrative and stuff like that.

1:02:42Alex O'Connor:It's a relatively modern phenomenon. to be like, no, no, this is like a literal account of what happened. Yeah, like so many Christians throughout history, not just, I just want to clarify, not just like in the modern day in response to science. Oh, let's reinterpret Genesis. Yeah, that was just a given. For a very, very long time. Yeah. And so, yeah, when you say embrace truth, you're talking here mostly about evolution and... I think I'm talking about, we could have a whole discussion about the historical critical method of looking at the Bible. And again, this gets very, it gets dicey because it feels like the other side of the coin of the embrace faith that we talked about, right?

1:03:22And I think that if you're a Christian, you're holding these two things. If you're a thoughtful Christian, you're holding these two things in tension. Because you've got, I have faith about the resurrection and my relationship with Jesus and the things that are power of God that I can't have historical insight into. But evolution, you have a lot of evidentiary insight into, right? We can know kind of beyond a shadow of a doubt. But there's also things that we can know about the Bible, like talking about Genesis. Well, it's pretty clear that there's two accounts of creation in Genesis from two different sources, that whoever put the Bible together decided that even though they were contradictory in some ways about the order of creation, the emphasis, the name of God and these things, that these two theological perspectives were important to include.

1:04:09So do you have to take the edges off and insist that it's one voice and that Moses wrote it? Or can you be like, no, for some reason, God decided to have these disparate accounts in his word that may be different than you actually think about. Or if you talk, when you talk about prophecy, like you've got examples of Matthew, especially because he loved to do this, essentially inventing things that no other gospel has, that no, there's no historical records of to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. Right. You know, the best example of this is when he talks about Jesus having to flee to Egypt to escape Herod's massacre.

1:04:53And it fulfills two prophecies. One, out of Egypt, I'll call my son. And the other one is Rachel is weeping for her children, which was a reference to the massacre. Well, there's no massacre of Herod in any extra biblical writings. There's no massacre of Herod in any other parts of the Bible. So the best conclusion is that he invented a massacre so he could invent a fleeing to Egypt so he could get a two-for-one fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. That's the most reasonable conclusion about that. And I think that does that mean that all of Christianity falls apart if you believe that Matthew was sort of like taking liberties with Old Testament prophecy?

1:05:34I don't think so. There's plenty of Christians who accept that critical scholarship and are still Christians. That's this embracing truth can go. It gets dicey for sure. But I just think that when you've got really thoughtful people who are looking at the stuff that you're saying and they're looking at something as evident as evolution, but then they're getting into this historical critical scholarship. These guys have a lot of points. Yeah. You can just put the blinders on and just be like, I'm going to believe, I'm going to believe, I'm going to believe, quiet, quiet, quiet. Or you can be like, I'm going to go into this unafraid.

1:06:10And just if something seems to be true, I'm going to accept it.

1:06:13Alex O'Connor:I think there's a very thoughtful kind of Christianity, which like, okay, there's nothing in principle that stops you from saying, I believe in the resurrection. I believe in Jesus. I believe in his miracles. But when someone says, did you know that like this particular passage, most scholars think it was added in later. It was an interpolation that you go like, oh, okay, well, then I don't believe he did that. And that's it. And you just accept it and just move on. There is a version of Christian belief that does that. interestingly yeah man one of the one of my biggest gripes is that i try to be very very nice to my my christian listeners i'm very grateful for them i have wonderful conversations with christians i'm deeply interested in christianity but people on the internet keep saying that i'm about to convert and it's because for me it's just the lowest bar in the history of intellectual thought that me not saying to people you know they're a bunch of idiots and they've got absolutely nothing going for them the only way that can possibly be explained that i'm actually listening to them and hearing them out and going that's really interesting actually it can only be because i'm about to convert christianity and man it gets on my nerves because people do it on um like youtube shorts there's this one youtube short of me which people keep telling me about because they see it on their feed that someone made and it's like me speaking on a podcast and they put that music in the background it's very sweet all that kind of stuff and i'm saying like you know there's the story of jesus where he comes across the woman caught in adultery and you know they say you know that the law says that we should stone him and he says that he who is without sin cast the first stone and it's just i mean it's just it's so based it's so brilliant it's just a perfect encapsulation of the of the ethic of jesus and the real ends if you go and look at the podcast the very next words out of my mouth are but of course most scholars believe that this was a later interpolation it wasn't originally in the bible and So, you know, it didn't really happen, right?

1:08:05Alex O'Connor:That's why I was talking about it. It doesn't matter, brother. The Lord is drawing you to him. And do you know what? The person who made that reel knows that's the next thing I said. They know that's the next thing I said. Of course, because they had to edit it. And they put the music and everything. I'm just like, come on, man. Well, so as we were talking about, I've started my own YouTube channel. After 20 years on YouTube, I've decided to start my own channel. Yes, we'll put that down in the description. But I made, I don't know how often I'm going to do videos on there, but because we're stopping the podcast, it's going to be the place that I talk about this type of stuff, maybe other stuff as well.

1:08:39But I made this one video that was about why I don't fear hell. And then I got caught up in the Christian algorithm real fast, just because it was a new channel and they were like, who's interested in this? And people comment, a lot of Christians comment on my stuff anytime I talk about this stuff. But this was like a new level. And there was like this one night where like comments were coming in every like couple of seconds because it was like it really hit the algorithm and so many of the comments were like well this is evidence that you do fear hell and that you are being drawn back and again it is it is difficult to not be like to not get frustrated about that the most frustrating

1:09:19Alex O'Connor:thing is it's not like you're making a video saying christianity is stupid and i'm an atheist and then a bunch of christians saying like oh well you know you you should be afraid of hell is that you're quite thoughtfully saying, you know, like here's some considerations and Christianity's got this going forward and this is what I think. And then people are saying, you know, you should be afraid of hell because it's, you know, it's coming for you. It's like, we're trying our best here. Yeah, I mean, this podcast alone will be used as evidence that the Lord is drawing both of us back. Here we are with an open Bible.

1:09:52Here's the thing, you know what? If the Lord is drawing me back, it's like, I don't have a, I don't have a, I'm not resistant to that. by me. No, it's like, I don't, I'm not, that's not my disposition as much as I'm told that that's my disposition. I think the thing that's offensive is that assuming to know the heart of someone else is that, that's the thing that's sort of like, well, you know why I did this. You know, all my motivations, you know what my life is like, you know what my relationships are like. Your comment seems to imply that.

1:10:21Alex O'Connor:I don't mind it exactly, but it's just that it's so, like where you just said then something like, if the Lord is drawing me back, then I'm here for it. like there you go that's your clip that goes on a youtube reel put it in black and white and people people do that and when they do that like it's it's not i don't mind people saying like you know it seems like you're really interested in this like do you think you know are you becoming more christian i'm just going to tell them honestly like you know probably not like but it's it's the sort of it's the people who are quite intentionally like editing to do it's all about engagement man yeah yeah it's all about that's why that's why i welcome these comments because as those comments about how I should fear hell and how the Lord is drawing me back were coming in every second, I was like, well, this video might do okay.

1:11:05Yeah, yeah. I'd recommend people watch that as well.

1:11:07Alex O'Connor:I mean, I've talked about fear of hell. It's been years since I've spoken about it as well. I don't spend that much time thinking about hell these days, but it's something that a lot of people, especially if they're sort of fresh out of a religious tradition, it's something that people can be afraid of. So you've got a great video on that and you reference a few videos in that video. Yeah, I really referenced the ones that you should watch because I don't go very deep. Yeah, like GM Skeptic went to Jerusalem to investigate the origins of hell. It's some really interesting stuff. There's people who do deeper dives.

1:11:35Yeah, yeah. Okay, but let's get to the final point, which is embrace Jesus. Yes, we've had embrace faith, embrace truth. Embrace Jesus. Embrace Jesus. In that order? In no particular order. This is just how it came to me. the thing here is that this is really about the cultural moment that we're having right now and I think that there are a lot of things that are happening in the church that are inconsistent with the way Jesus spoke about things and are and by definition are not biblical and I think that this is one of the reasons that the church is growing a little bit right now, there is a political side to this.

1:12:20I think that the sort of dogged pursuit of political power and the consolidation of political power, especially in the United States, by Christians, is one of the biggest betrayals of the teachings of Jesus. and I think that it has been disillusioning to a lot of Christians. Interestingly, my entire deconstruction happened outside of that. Now, I was a conservative Christian. I voted Republican because of abortion, probably alone. But the political landscape has changed a lot and at this point, the kind of the embrace of the pursuit of political power and talking about it and how it's spreading to more and more Christians, I feel like this is a new level.

1:13:21I don't think this is something that I experienced, you know, 15 years ago when I was deconstructing. So I want to talk a little bit about what Jesus has to say about this or, you know, what the Bible has to say about this. And then we can kind of talk about why I think this is such a problem. Let's start in when Jesus is before Pilate, right? So this is just kind of setting the stage. You've got Jesus before Pilate in John 18. And he essentially says, well, Pilate is basically asking him like, well, let me just say it. Let me just read it. So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews?

1:14:05Jesus answered, do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? And Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world. So again, here we are, Jesus is having this, moment where he has been taken in and he's being taken in by the political forces that existed at that time where they were kind of executing the will of God to literally execute him.

1:14:43And what did he do? He took that opportunity to say, my kingdom, this is not about this worldly kingdom that you're talking about. My kingdom is not of this world. And if it were, my servants would be fighting. They'd be doing something about it right now. They would be in here doing something about it. The reason that they are not resistant, in fact, earlier when Peter cuts off the ear, he's like, no, he puts it back on. He's like, no, no, that's not what we're doing. We're not fighting. We're not here to fight. You don't get that anywhere from Jesus, right? Well, you get that a little bit from Israel, which I think is one of the reasons that I think Christian nationalism is a little bit confused about trying to basically be the nation of Israel today.

1:15:23It's like, it's a little complicated, but let's just talk about Jesus.

1:15:26Alex O'Connor:And the imagery there of Trump with literally a broken ear shouting fight. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's quite stark contrast. Right. But it gets, I think it gets even more explicit. So this is the famous passage where the Pharisees try to trap Jesus in the question about taxes.

1:15:49So they had been giving him a number of different challenges to catch him. Right. And so we'll just kind of cover this because I can remember the details. So, you know, they had this, the Pharisees have this idea to come and ask Jesus if they should pay taxes to Caesar. And the reason that they thought that this was a trap is because if he's supposed to be the Messiah, at least as they understand it, he's supposed to be the one delivering them from this Roman. So if he's like saying, yeah, we should give money to our oppressors, not a very good Messiah, according to their perspective. And if he says, no, we shouldn't pay taxes, then they report him and get him delivered to the Romans.

1:16:28So this was like a nice setup. And when they do this, they say, should we pay taxes to Caesar? He's like, grab me a denarius, grab me a coin. And then he takes it and he says, who is this on the coin? And they say, Caesar. And he says, render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. Why is this so important? And why is this so relevant to the current situation? Notice he didn't say anything like, see this coin? It should say, in Yahweh, we trust on it. That's the battle that we should be fighting. We should be fighting to get the kingdom that is oppressing us or the kingdom of this world to represent God.

1:17:10He's basically saying, this is irrelevant to my mission. Yeah, pay taxes to Caesar. that's a completely different thing. This embrace of political power and thinking that that is the answer, that's how we bring about the kingdom of God. It is a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus was talking about. And I do think it's wild because the whole, you know, the in God we trust on the American money, like that was, it's a pretty recent innovation. I can't remember the - That was like a Cold War thing.

1:17:40Alex O'Connor:Yeah. Yeah, I think, I can't remember exactly when it -

1:17:48Look, that's water. Yeah, all right. Right on to the Bible. You know, I only did that to make you feel welcome. Okay. Where were we? Everything's cleaned up. You know, my Bible's a little bit wet. No worse. Okay.

1:18:04Alex O'Connor:Holy water now on the table. So I think that this last passage is the one that is the most informative about this. And you've talked about it a moment ago. the temptation of Jesus. And of course he's out there in the wilderness for 40 days. And so there's the three temptations from the devil. The first being, you know, eat some, turns these stones into bread. The next one being throw yourself off of this and the angels will save you. And then the third one being going up to the top of the mountain saying, look at all the kingdoms of the world. I will give you all of this if you will just bow down and worship me.

1:18:41And of course Jesus says, be gone, Satan. you know what does it say exactly in the es he says he says worship god and serve him alone yeah be gone satan for it is written you shall worship the lord your god and serve and only him so you

1:18:57Alex O'Connor:shall you serve again it's the yeah and interestingly it's not that's not actually written there's no the jesus is like slightly rewording the passage he's trying to the in in the old testament the passage is something like um it's something like fear i think it's fear god and serve him only or something like that. It doesn't use the word worship, which is obviously it's Greek and Hebrew, but he's not actually quoting it quite correctly there, which is interesting. Yeah, it is. Side note, footnote. Yeah, footnote. Continue. So this, to me, this is pretty wild considering the state of the current American church.

1:19:34Because there's a lot going on here theologically, of course, but the one opportunity that, that Jesus has to make a commentary about embracing political power over the kingdoms of this world is presented as a temptation of Satan. This is presented as a temptation of Satan to fall for this, we've got to be in control of the kingdoms of the world. Does Jesus say, well, okay, maybe you're in charge right now, but you just wait until a few of my followers are in government or you wait until we're in charge. Again, he says, it's not about that. We are operating on a different plane. And it just blows my mind that we've gotten to this place where this seems to be the way that the kingdom of God is going to be established is by infiltrating and taking over the government.

1:20:32And I'm not just saying that it's not a good idea from a Christian perspective. I'm saying it is forbidden. I'm saying that it is explicitly called out as something that will take you away from actually doing the work of God. And I think it's interesting. I think it's worth noting that the more that Christians have embraced this pursuit of political power, the more they have embraced political leadership that looks a lot less like Jesus and a lot more like the devil himself. Is that not crazy?

1:21:06Alex O'Connor:Yeah, I think it's true. But it's also maybe it's a bit easy to say that if you pursue political power, you begin to betray Christian principles. And some people will listen to this. And I think there are two things which people will say in response to this. One thing is they'll say, okay, but if you look at the Old Testament, God is constantly installing literal political kings. There are at least some contexts in which God thought that it was necessary to have, you know, his rulers on earth. I think I know what I would say in response to that. I wonder what you would say. And the second thing is then, okay, I'm a Christian.

1:21:40Alex O'Connor:I'm sat at home. I'm listening to this. Don't clip that either. And I would like to know what to do then, because I care about what's happening in my country. And I want to vote for somebody who shares my values. But am I supposed to look at anybody who says, I'm a Christian and I'm running on Christian motivations and say, no, no, no, I'm not going to vote for you because that can't be true. Whereas I feel like I want someone who's Christian to run my, what can they actually do? Those are good questions. To answer the first, I think that the kingdom of Israel of which was sort of preparing the way for the Messiah that he comes out of, that's a different thing.

1:22:19That's not America. That doesn't apply to these kingdoms. That's a different thing. I don't think there's a theological justification for applying principles of the way that God was establishing and upholding his nation for his people and then trying to apply that even to modern day Israel or definitely to any other kingdom. That dog won't hunt, as they say.

1:22:43Alex O'Connor:To the extent that we can make sense of God having a chosen people and a chosen nation, it seems like America, despite what they think, might not be that. But even so, there is this... Maybe not. Please don't revoke my visa. The problem, the other thing is that Jesus is presented as this fulfillment and sort of fulfillment of, but also in many ways, he sort of removes the need for certain kinds of Jewish practices. So there's this idea that Jesus is kind of like the new Jewish temple. It used to be that you worship in this particular place and this is where you meet God. And now it's Jesus and Jesus is everywhere and anywhere.

1:23:23Alex O'Connor:And a similar kind of thing is happening here with like authority. I mean, the Jewish kingdom was waiting for the Messiah who would be, you know, their ultimate king. And when the ultimate king comes, he's not a political leader. He is the opposite of political leader. So I think that the extent to which this is specifically a problem, like if somebody is listening, in other words, and says, OK, yeah, but, you know, Rhett doesn't understand that, you know, in the Old Testament, political power was really important. This is just the problem of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament.

1:23:50Alex O'Connor:Yeah. Because I could say the same thing to a Christian, like, well, if your Jesus is doing this or that or that or that, then what about in the Old Testament where God's commanding this, that, that or that? Or this thing you're supposed to do that you're no longer supposed to do or whatever. It's just the same problem revisited. As long as a Christian is willing to say that, yeah, Jesus changed the nature of God's relationship with earth. Exactly. The same things here. But OK, that's sort of out of the way. So what does a Christian do? What does a Christian do? So I think this is a great question because I would say the extreme application of this perspective is abstaining from political involvement at all.

1:24:26And there are denominations that do that. And you have to respect that. This is a bit of, again, there's so many layers of this. There's a bit of a conundrum considering that I don't think that any of the people who were reading this at the time thought that in the year 2025, the world would still be around. That's right. So I don't think that they envision 2000 years of more kingdoms and what we have here. So we find ourselves in a situation that maybe some of this philosophy doesn't specifically apply because, you know, they were selling all their stuff, not because they were communists, but because they thought the world was coming.

1:25:03Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

1:25:04Alex O'Connor:It becomes a bit easier to say, like, who cares about the government, whatever the world is about to end, which makes it a bit complicated because for a Christian, they kind of have to interpret. Right. This not they're not believing the world's about to end. Again, so that so I'm going with that. I'm just I'm trying. I'm just saying I believe that they thought that Jesus was coming back. Yeah. And he didn't. But as a Christian, you do. believe that he wasn't intending that and that he knew that the world would still be around in 2025. What I'm saying is that it is a temptation because you start believing that the only way to get what God wants is for you to do it for him through human means.

1:25:49And I think that ultimately when you feel like the people in power politically have to represent your worldview, it indicates that you're fearful that if that wasn't the case, that God couldn't do what he needed to do. And so I think this is a higher calling to a level of spirituality and commitment to the kingdom that does, I think that if you follow this wholeheartedly, I think it means that, I'm not saying you don't vote, but I think that the idea that the answer is to install Christians into political office and that's where your hope lies and to work very tirelessly for that. That's just, it's not biblical.

1:26:28And I think ultimately, I don't think you can hold on to political power and Jesus at the same time. I think that if you're gonna hold on to Jesus and you're holding on to this world, you've kind of got to drop that pursuit in the same way. And the crazy thing that happens as a result of this is you end up, like I said, you end up aligning yourselves with people who do not represent the fruit of the spirit. it. You've got people who are living in fear. I think this is another aspect of this is that so much of the current political pursuit or pursuit of political power is based in fear. You've got people all across the United States mainlining Fox News and the like every single night.

1:27:13Like, give it to me. Give me that stuff that makes me fearful every single night. I got to be afraid of the brown people who are going to take my jobs or, you know, I got to be afraid of the people who are gonna come take my guns. I gotta be afraid of the trans woman who might come into my daughter's restroom, right? And so frankly, that whole thing pisses me off because I feel like an entire generation has been stolen from us because you have what could be older, wiser people who have perspective, but yet they have been completely captivated by fear and they tap into it every single night. Like that pisses me off that a generation has been stolen from us.

1:27:49But what if, I just, this is a hypothetical. what if Christians in America were not mostly known for wanting to have political power and all of the things that come along with that and all the fear that that is based in. And instead they were cool, calm and collected because they trusted that God was accomplishing his purpose and they were busying themselves with the work of Jesus, being the hands and feet of Jesus, feeding the poor, caring for the orphan, caring for the elderly, caring for the widow. So it seems to me that they don't believe that that would actually do anything. That level of spiritual commitment to being like, I'm going to be about the kingdom and I'm going to trust that God will accomplish his will through me in that.

1:28:36I just think it's a lack of faith. I think it kind of goes back. We come full circle is that there's not a real faith that God can accomplish his purpose apart from you putting the 10 commandments up in every courthouse. Really? Like you really think that that's what's going to do it? Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip-hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Kraft Mac and Cheese. Best thing ever.

1:29:06Alex O'Connor:Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan, equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Yeah. Have you seen that clip?

1:29:37Alex O'Connor:I can't remember where it was. I can't remember which, like, it might have been some, like, state government legislature where they're sort of debating putting up the Ten Commandments. And there's this guy, some politician, where he'll, maybe we can play the clip. I don't know. We'll check the copyright or whatever. What is the fourth commandment?

1:30:00Alex O'Connor:Keep the Sabbath. Part of keeping the Sabbath holy is not working on the Sabbath? That is, that is, yeah. What day is the Jewish Sabbath? It is on Saturday. And what day is it today? It is Saturday. Here we are. The Christian Sabbath is what day? Sunday in honor of the day that Jesus rose from the dead. And we're scheduled to give this bill a final vote on what day of the week? It's ironic, isn't it? Would you be willing to postpone your bill so that we're not breaking the Ten Commandments by working on the Jewish or Christian Sabbath? I love that you said that. You're saying that you'd rather tell people to follow the Ten Commandments than follow it yourself?

1:30:42Alex O'Connor:The guy's like, so you want to put the Ten Commandments up? And they're like, yeah, yeah. And he's like, can you just tell me what are the commandments? And one of them is, you know, thou shalt keep the Sabbath and keep it holy. And he goes, can you just tell me which day do Christians typically sort of treat as the Sabbath? It's like Sunday. And what day is it today? Okay, it's Sunday. okay and which which day uh uh the jews consider the sabbath to be like saturday and say and which day did this you know legislation get put into motion it was it was on saturday right and it's just like it's one of the funniest clips i've seen because it's just it's so easy it's just it was just such an easy move to make because it's so ridiculous and so yeah antithetical well just look at what's happening oklahoma is probably the best example of this i think a bible in every classroom and all this stuff.

1:31:32But the real travesty here isn't just that it's not biblical and it shows a lack of faith, but the people who are enticing Christians into this pursuit of political power, they don't care about the kingdom of God at all. They're using, they see Christians as a powerful political group. Voting block. It's a voting block, very powerful. And they can cater to them. They can pander to them. And frankly, the Christians are eating it up. And I just think that they're falling to a temptation that it's worth aligning yourself with the types of people who are currently in charge of the Republican Party.

1:32:18That if you stopped and just thought about it a little bit, you would be like, hmm, is this worth it? Like you don't even have to. If the Bible didn't address it at all, I think you could come to the conclusion that you could just decipher that this is not a good idea to align ourselves with the type of people and interest. You know, the things that are Christians are celebrating right now that just are not consistent with Jesus at all. But I'm just making the point that Jesus seems to be very clear that this, you know, there's a temptation. I get it. There's a temptation. you're going to want to, you're going to think that you have to take over these institutions, these kingdoms of the world in order to, for my will to be done.

1:32:59But I'm telling you that that's a temptation and you shouldn't go down that road.

1:33:03Alex O'Connor:I think people are going to think, I mean, sometimes people vote for parties that they know maybe don't actually in their heart of hearts represent their interests, but they do represent their interests, but they might not be doing so honestly so you know everybody knows that you know this political figure that they're voting for isn't really a christian but because they're trying to essentially cater for christians well they are pro-life for example i mean you spoke before about how that was you know an important influence on you and they might say to you like right i hear what you're saying but like you know i care about unborn children i want to to vote for a politician that's going to protect that and okay sure you're probably not really a christian you're probably not really like a jesus figure or whatever, what am I supposed to do?

1:33:46Alex O'Connor:If me sort of being like, well, I'm just going to be like Jesus and I'm just going to walk around and give people money on the street and stuff. Meanwhile, abortion becomes legal and they really care about that. They still want to apply some Christian political pressure. It does feel as though fully taking your foot off the pedal there would be essentially like a removal of your interests from those who are governing you. Yeah, and I think that's why it's a temptation. Yeah. You know, again, and I'm not, like I do vote according to my political interests because I'm not, I'm actually not, like I love the character of Jesus and I love these stories, but I don't apply this stuff to my life in the way that Christians do.

1:34:30Yeah. And so I'm just, what I'm doing is I'm kind of, I am kind of calling them to the carpet a little bit and saying that, hey, this is just not consistent with, because you can reason your way and be like, well, yeah, but don't I need to like, vote for things that are consistent with the Bible. It's like, well, that's, I'm not really talking about who you vote for. I'm talking more about the fact that the entire right at this point is, and they're using Christian, and so many Christians, like if you go on Christian Facebook, if you can bear it, and see how they're celebrating what is happening and the things that are being won back, as if it's like, praise be, amen.

1:35:08You know, praise God that this person won an election. And I'm saying that specifically of thinking that that's where your hope lies. That's not biblical.

1:35:18Alex O'Connor:I think it's also worth pointing out that you might say, yeah, but like, you know, if Jesus were around, he'd be pro-life and he'd care. It's like, you don't think that the Roman government were doing things to that that Jesus probably thought weren't that great. I mean, in the ancient world, people would like take live newborn babies and like throw them in the dumpster because they're disabled. Right. And it's Christians who had like a really, really strong role to play in the undoing it. They call it exposure in the ancient world, you know. And Aristotle says quite plainly, like, you know, if a child is deformed, just, you know, leave them, leave them out to die.

1:35:56Alex O'Connor:And it was Christians who played a huge role in turning that into something that we weren't allowed to do anymore. but it wasn't through political pressure in the traditional sense. It was sort of - Like the transformation of culture. Yeah. Like if at the time, it's worth remembering, in other words, that there were like political issues of the Roman world in Jesus's time, and even in the faith, which were probably much worse and more extreme than basically anything that's happening in our family. But the only thing he seemed to care about when it came to authority was the religious authority that they were hypocrites.

1:36:32Alex O'Connor:Yeah, that's where his anger lies. He wasn't shouting at the political authorities in the same way, which shows us at the very least where Jesus' interest lies and I think gives us an indication as to maybe what he might be more like if you saw him today. I think you'd be more likely to find him under the underpass, talking to a homeless guy than in a voting caucus trying to rally votes. And I think the real danger, again, to bring it back to kind of in closing of why this causes people to leave if you want people who are coming in. And a lot of people are coming in because of this, because they're identifying politically with the right.

1:37:16And they are like, well, where's a place where that's sort of celebrated? Well, that's celebrated in the Christian church. when you bring people in based on that promise it's kind of like somebody going to a restaurant because of trivia night you know it's like oh they had a great trivia night well how's the food the food now the food sucks eventually the trivia night is going to get old and you're going to realize that you're at a restaurant where the food sucks so you know a church that isn't about Jesus is like a restaurant that's not about the food. And I just think that you cannot point to anything in this political movement that is like, yes, that is really representing the heart of Jesus.

1:37:58I think you can point to a lot that seems to be going directly against the things that he said and taught. And so when, you know, this political movement that's happening right now, who knows how far it's going to go. Eventually it's going to pass away. Jesus and the church are not going to pass away. Like they are going to still be there. They will evolve in some way, but those people who are there because of some sense of patriotism or they're like, I'm fearful about what's the transformation of our country. And that's why I'm at church. It's just like those people, when the political movement dies, there won't be anything there for them.

1:38:39And do you want them to fall in love with Jesus or do you want them to fall in love with making sure that the Ten Commandments are in every classroom? Make it about Jesus, not about the politics.

1:38:49Alex O'Connor:Yeah. Embrace faith, embrace truth, and embrace Jesus. The roadmap for keeping Christians in the church from your two friendly neighborhood. Rhett McWhatever you are. Welcome back to the show. I like that McWhatever you are. That's good. thank you thank you very much for coming back on you do have a new youtube channel you're an up and comer yeah it's just called rep mclaughlin you've got like what 40 000 subscribers or something on it yeah i did that one video maybe there'll be another one up by this time yeah have you got i mean have you got space on the walls out there for another youtube plaque another silver plaque that's a really good question you hit 100 you might i think we might have to put a new shelf in yeah it's it's getting pretty pretty extraordinary out there i'll link it in the description so that people can people can go check it out and i'm sure most people know where else to find you.

1:39:36Alex O'Connor:Thanks for your time. Yeah, thanks for having me.