330: Have You Joined the Cult of Easy Christianity?

Out of the Question Podcast: Uncovering the Question Behind the Question

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Andrea Schwartz (00:03)
Welcome to out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question while providing real solutions for biblical world and life View. Your host is Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor and founder of the Chalcedon Teacher Training Institute.

Andrea Schwartz (00:21)
The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. Unfortunately, this means that the problems of our day are anything but new. They are repeats of previous apostasy and rebellion against the triune God. My guest today has been with us before. Ron Kronz is a pastor, apologist, anti abortion activist and missionary, along with being the author of three books, the third of which we’re going to talk about today. In my eyes, Ron is best described as a passionate Christian who who echoes David’s expressed feelings in Psalm 119, 136. Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law. Ron’s past, which I hope he’ll share about, has given him much to repent of and by God’s grace to him much to rejoice in. When Ron was saved, he knew he was saved for a kingdom purpose, not merely to be delivered from sin. Ron, thanks for joining me today.

Ron Kronz (01:25)
That’s my absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me again.

Andrea Schwartz (01:28)
Okay, so we’re going to be discussing your latest book, the Gospel of Jeroboam and the cult of easy Christianity. Now I’m fairly sure if you surveyed the average Christian church, many could not tell you who Jeroboam was wearing when he lived and what this so called gospel of his was. Moreover, many would be surprised and maybe insulted to hear that they’re part of a cult of easy Christianity. So let’s start by unpacking your title.

Ron Kronz (02:03)
Yeah, the, the, the reason I chose the topic. I’ve been studying the Word of God for quite some time and I’m going, I was had been going through the account of Jeroboam as his initiation after the split of the kingdom and his first. He’s the first king we’re talking about. Jeroboam the first by the way and his introduction. And then I took note how frequently he was indicted throughout scripture. He’s all the way up until the fall to the brutal fall to the Assyrians he’s mentioned. And no other king warrants that kind of an indictment. And I began to wonder what’s so horrible about Jeroboam. I mean there’s others to choose from. Omri, Ahab, Ahab and others. There were lots of bad kings, but he seems to rise to the top as the consistently, covenantally speaking, worst and most damaging king. And it really comes back to the very first words of Jeroboam. He says, it’s too difficult for you to go to Jerusalem. He’s speaking about the place where they were to offer sacrifices. And so when that and that. And with the idea, with the notion that he was providing that it was too difficult, that he was being a benefit, sort of a false messiah to them, he proposed two golden calves, one at Bethel and the one at Dan.

Ron Kronz (03:29)
And those also had strategic reasons. But, but underpinning all of that is this idea that I’m going to make this easy on you. You don’t have to go through all of the rigors of covenantal faithfulness. All you have to do is just take the EAs and we can certainly go into the specific locations of Bethel. But it became my contention as I considered this against the backdrop of our own history, is that the worst tyrants are usually built on the pillars of those who pretend to be messiahs, pretend to help, pretend, as it were, to ease burdens. And this is very attractive to people who want their burdens eased. I mean, Jesus offers a whole different story of discipleship than what we generally hear. He talks about taking up your cross daily and following him. If anyone saves his life, he’ll lose it. We’re talking about a serious, serious commitment here. My life is on the altar for that of Christ. Well, that’s pretty hard. That’s, that’s, that’s very difficult and very challenging. And it goes against the flesh. Well, it’s much, it’s much. It’s very attractive to think that somebody can take that burden away and soften the blow of Christianity.

Andrea Schwartz (04:55)
Okay. We use the term today, the nanny state. Was Jeroboam positing a nanny state?

Ron Kronz (05:02)
Yeah, definitely. So. And it plays itself into. You can almost go through not just our state, but the way we, the way church is done. Go to your church and it’s too difficult. You can almost just take and preach that. It’s too difficult for you to get in control of your eating habits. Thank you, fda. It’s too difficult for you to be covenantally faithful. That’s okay. We’ll outspend the world and military. We’ll protect you. Just give your money to us. And it finds itself into the church. It’s too difficult for you to sing robustly is unto the Lord. But we’ll just crank up the worship team and they’ll do that for you. You just kind of mouth along and little by little responsibility has been taken from the Christians willingly. We’ve been happy to give it up, and that’s led the pro life movement. You don’t have to stand for the preborn. You don’t really have to rescue those staggering towards the slaughter. You don’t have to do that. That’s too hard. Just send some money to a pregnancy resource center, all of those things. Act at public education, which one of your, I think, most important topics that you consistently talk about?

Ron Kronz (06:17)
Well, then it’s too difficult for you to teach these things to your children. When you rise, sit, walk, stand, lie down, and so forth and so on. When you go along the way, well, that’s okay. Take them to Sunday school. They’ll do that for you. Or just turn them over to the public education system. And lo and behold, they indoctrinate us against the things of Christ.

Andrea Schwartz (06:39)
Okay, so the easy Christianity, which you’ve just outlined some examples of, it’s appealing to people. If somebody right now came up to me and offered me a dead frog to eat, I’d go, ugh, I don’t want to eat that. Right. But if somehow or other they made it look good or whatever, I might be okay, that looks good. Doesn’t look like a dead frog. So was Jeroboam, and then by analogy today, was he reading the people correctly, that they were lazy? Because we don’t want to say Jeroboam made them lazy.

Ron Kronz (07:12)
No, no. Water seeks its own level, that’s for sure. I think that you see that in. I want to thank Jeremiah, the 32nd or 33rd chapter, paraphrasing, as it goes with the king, it goes with the prince, it goes with the people and all the people, the priests, the prophets, and all the people of Judah. It takes one to have the other. You don’t get a Jeroboam unless you have people who want a Jeroboam, that which is true in our political spectrum today.

Andrea Schwartz (07:41)
So back in the latter part of the last century, there was a lot of talk about cults, different kinds of cults. And then we will talk oftentimes about cults that have somewhat of a Christian appearance. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness. You call this the cult of easy Christianity. And why do you call it a cult?

Ron Kronz (08:04)
I call it a cult because it stops short of what Christ has commanded, which is to go and make disciples of the nations, to teach all that he commands. That’s a command. We’re not doing that. I. I’m on the. I just got back from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I’ve been in, I’ve probably been to Africa 25 or 30 times. I’m cleaning up the damage of this culture of short term missions who just, just with the easy believism and all that. And it will build you your schoolhouse type of thing. It finds itself all the way at the, at the baseline of, as I said earlier, at the way we even do church. Very little is required of cultural Christianity. I mean what do you have to do to be. You just give what you’re comfortable giving and you participate. Maybe you’re a, on the welcome team and, and there’s nothing a matter with a welcome team, but it’s a far cry from taking one’s cross up and the aforementioned teaching your children. That’s heavy lifting. That takes effort. Your children, you have children, have children, they don’t. That takes persistent effort. And that’s what we’ve rebelled against.

Ron Kronz (09:23)
We’ve rebelled against that element of Christianity and it becomes cultish and it’s practice and the fruit. Proof, the proof is in the pudding. Just look at our nation. We’ve got, we’ve got, we’ve got a church on every corner. We’ve got, I’m in the Bible Belt now. I’m North Carolina, now I’m northeast North Carolina. We have churches everywhere and they’re raging state worshipers.

Andrea Schwartz (09:47)
All right, so you give a couple of things in your book that I found interesting. You talked about how your wife wrote letters or emails to all the churches or at least a number of churches, whether it was in your area or nationwide. And you basically break it down to three different ways that people respond to a call to action, which I believe her emails were about. Explain a little bit about that and what you concluded from that.

Ron Kronz (10:18)
Yeah, that was a disturbing case study. We didn’t mean it to be a case study. We actually just wanted to help do something on behalf of the preborn as a Christian duty, as our obligation to Christ. And so she sent emails around to the, these churches, 270 if I remember, and only about 10% of them got back. And the crux of her message, the strength of her message was we would like to help you with your efforts on behalf of the preborn who are being ritually slaughtered, you know, in our nation. We would like to help you. Is there any way that we can help you? And only 10% roughly thought it was worth replying to. And of the respondents, the chief responders were those who, who said they gave the pregnancy resource centers, which is great. That’s Fine. But it does absolutely nothing to take the ax to the root of the problem. It doesn’t. It doesn’t cast down the arguments that are held up for abortion. It doesn’t. Which I prefer to call child sacrifice. It doesn’t cast the arguments that exalt them themselves above the knowledge of God in that it just is a convenient, easy way.

Ron Kronz (11:37)
I’m not saying. Again, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it doesn’t. If everybody. If actually you may appreciate this, I understand that pregnancy resource centers significantly outnumber abortion providers. So we’re not at a loss for diapers and we’re not at a loss for baby bottles. We’re not a loss for blankets. We’re at a loss for people who are willing to go to the campuses and go to the streets and, and, and expose having nothing to do with unfruitful deeds of darkness, rather expose them. So. But instead. But that’s all hard work. And how do I know that? Because I do that stuff and it’s. I would much rather, just speaking frankly to you, if I were just in charge of my own life and Christ wasn’t, I would just much rather just send my excess money, just a little excess money when I could budget to a pregnancy resource center. It really does not the command of God to address it biblically. Even those pregnancy resources centers rarely address it from a robust Christian worldview. The next group besides the pregnancy resource centers were the people who applauded Cindy. They said, that’s great.

Ron Kronz (12:54)
We really are glad that you’re doing something, that we’re glad for your position. But they offered absolutely nothing tangible. They just were glad they had a good moral opinion, which also falls drastically short of the crisis at hand, not to mention the commands of God regarding it. And then the other group was the group who basically told her, how dare you interfere with the woman’s right to choose. Now, Andrea, the footnote to that is not one group. I didn’t. I’m sorry. In 270, I think there was one group that wanted to take the discussion further. They just wanted to check a block, be done with it and go back to their programs. Now here’s the footnote to this that you may appreciate is later on I said, now I’m going to do a case study from another email, sent these very same churches a letter volunteering to be a part of their hospitality team. Almost all of them responded and they responded really, wow, gushingly. And it was painful. I stopped sending. I sent probably 70 or 80 of them. I couldn’t bear it anymore. It was too painful for me to read their responses knowing that these were the same exact churches who were content to stand by as our preborn neighbors were ritually slaughtered, who were killed in the name of choice and medicine in our nation, bringing down the judgment of God around us.

Ron Kronz (14:28)
And the same exact churches. And they were gushing, and they were embarrassing. Embarrassingly gushing. I mean, clownishly so. I don’t want to really even say what they said. It was just bad. It was just. It was pitiful, to be honest with you. It made me angry. I am angry about it. I think I should be angry about that. But that representation that’s cultish is sure, come in here and have a cup of coffee and welcome people in. Nobody’s going to be angry at you about that. Nobody cares about that. You’ll never be spat on and nobody will hate. You won’t make any enemies for doing that. No, no pagan, no witch will be angry at you for doing that. But they will be angry about standing for the preborn. And that goes into every other true command of God. If you are serious about the commands of God and serious about loving your neighbor, which is, of course, part of the commands of God, you will be hated for that. You’ll make enemies. But you don’t make enemies for being on the welcome team or the softball team.

Andrea Schwartz (15:33)
I think a lot of it is, we’ve gotten into the way churches are laid out that people come in and they’re consuming. It doesn’t look an awful lot or a lot different than I went to a concert or I went to hear a speaker, or I went to hear a play. So there’s a lot of involvement missing. And I can’t help but think, Ron, that the early church, especially because they were under persecution, et cetera, set up these arenas or this place for people to talk. When they got together, they did it at their peril. But they didn’t just do it just to do it. They. They had work to do.

Ron Kronz (16:12)
Yes. And I would. I would argue that they did not do it as spectators. They were. They were. You just. I’m preaching this Sunday from Titus and talking about redemption of all things and. And the prominence of the pat. In fact, I have it right in front of me is the RePet. Good works. Good works. Every good work. Lead in good works so that they may not be unfruitful. Those are all active things that good works are supposed to be part and parcel of the Christian walk. But you don’t really have. If you redefine good works to going to a climate controlled building and sitting down and enjoying, as you said, paraphrasing what you said, the show, listening to a paid performer produce a talk and listen to the worship team play songs and stuff, it’s really not conducive. You can check that off the block and go back to what you were doing and have the appearance of righteousness. You can hold the door open for your wife in the parking lot. You can be a swell guy. You can be just that guy. I was giving a talk and Charlotte little while ago and I was talking about Christian funerals and we’ve all been to these Christian funerals where I made up a fictitious character by the name of Frank.

Ron Kronz (17:40)
Dead Frank. You go to Dead Frank’s, he’s your classic pietist. There’s Dead Frank. And what are they going to say about Frank? They’re going to say, well, he didn’t have an enemy in the world. Is that good? Is that good? Or here’s one. He would have wanted me to preach the gospel. And here his kids are sitting on the front row. They never heard Dead Frank talk about the gospel. And this. So if this was so important, why do you have to die and pay some other guy to do it for him? And it all flows back to Frank found it a lot easier just to be a nice guy and drink coffee and be a part of the, you know, the audio visual team and have somebody else preach the gospel for him at the end of his life. And, and that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Andrea Schwartz (18:31)
Exactly. As a matter of fact, I always like to tell the young people I teach for the good news to make sense, you have to know what the bad news is. And there isn’t a lot of other than just abstractly. And, and so in your book you give some real examples of how. And you use the term Stockholm syndrome, which if anybody knows about the Stockholm syndrome, it means that you’re held captive and you’re maybe in fear of losing your life, but your life is spared. And then you have affinity for the person who didn’t kill you. And you’ll do all sorts of things that really don’t have a lot to do with what you thought of before. Why do you talk about easy Christianity in terms of the Stockholm syndrome?

Ron Kronz (19:21)
Well, because we’ve been spared the idea behind Stockholm syndrome. If I remember correctly, your life has been threatened. You’ve got this life threatening thing, but your captor spares you your life. Well, now they become a hero to you never mind the fact that they were the one that caused your problem to begin with. And so you begin to, you begin to view them almost defensively. You’ll defend them against any outward attack. So Stockholm syndrome applies to Christianity, the political world. I mean, just say something. I mean, here’s an example of this. Say something against one of your friends, Political enemies say something. Or their political ally say yes, but this guy, let’s just call this right out. Donald Trump is a sodomite. Affirming child sacrifice, approving IVF funding man. He’s a pagan. He’s a wicked man. I’m not going to get into an argument about who would have been better. That’s not the point. That is the reality about Donald Trump. He states it, these are things he’s done. I’m not plagiari, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not slandering him. These are things he says and does. He affirms all of those things that I said, funds what I said.

Ron Kronz (20:45)
He said. And if you say that to a Trump supporter, they will be angry at you. They’ll defend this guy who is, by the way, trying to raise the budget. You know, so that’s Stockholm syndrome. You’re just looking for another, another messiah. It’s much easier, Andrea. It’s easy to go in the voting booth and vote for those blesser of two evils. It’s difficult to disciple the nation, to disciple the culture, to think differently and stop approving of wicked men.

Andrea Schwartz (21:18)
So it seems to me, and I’ve been having discussions like this with some of my students, some other people involved in the work I do or the meetings we have. People are very, very comfortable with having Zealand missing from Christianity. They, in other words, maybe you’re just a radical guy. Look at all the things you just brought up. Chill out, Ron. You know, isn’t there a lot to be happy about? And everything is surrounded by my life is pretty good. As if the whole purpose of Jesus dying on the cross was so that your life and my life could be pretty good. How does that fail to recognize the kingdom calling that we all have?

Ron Kronz (22:03)
That’s fantastic. It’s a great question. I just recently wrote a blog along those lines, indicting natural law and common sense. And as you know, I was up in Congo. I was really near the heat. It was very, very hectic. And having been there many times, I realized that I might not come back. It was without going into being dramatic, I realized that this might do it for me. They’re at war. And I wasn’t able to get where I wanted to go. All the roads were closed. And now more atrocities are occurring in Goma and in Bukavu, where they’ve fallen. Now, this is what’s important. This is what applies to that is in Congo, they are predominantly professing Christian. In Rwanda, with whom they’re at war, they are largely professing Christians. But the kind of Christianity they have is just what you described. My personal blessing, my personal salvation, my personal prosperity. What we’ve exported to them or imported, if you prefer, what we’ve sent to them, that’s what they have. That’s what they’ve embraced. They have no place for the kingdom. And so for them, without being unnecessarily graphic, when somebody bayonets a child for sport, that’s common sense to them.

Ron Kronz (23:31)
That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s common sense. That’s, that’s natural law. That makes sense to them. They haven’t been discipled to obey all that Christ commands. And so they have got. A lot of personal professions of faith are easy to come by in Africa, but any kind of a, any stability is not. And now we’re suffering, we’re suffering in Congo in ways that are just absolutely indescribable to me.

Andrea Schwartz (24:01)
So just to be clear, you used Donald Trump as an example of a long line of statist figures that said, I’m going to make it easy. It shouldn’t have to be this difficult for you. You’re going to be so happy. You won’t know what to do with all your happiness. And when people. I paraphrase a little bit.

Ron Kronz (24:22)
Yeah, you got it instead of better.

Andrea Schwartz (24:27)
But when all is said and done, I mean, you’ve been at this for a while. It’s like people need to be resuscitated if they’re truly got the spirit. It’s like, it’s like I either have the conclusion that they don’t have the spirit, and that’s why it’s not. You don’t see manifestations of it, which of course offends people to even bring that up. But you have done this a lot. Do you look at your success in terms of percentages or just in terms of your faithfulness?

Ron Kronz (24:58)
Yeah, I’m reticent to talk about my faithfulness. The Lord is. The Lord is gracious. If there be any good thing in me, it’s because of Christ. I’m reading out of the Bible. I’m reading about. Let me, let me give you a backwards answer on that and hopefully it’ll make sense. And again, it does not stand that because I don’t like Donald Trump, that I like Harris. You know it doesn’t.

Andrea Schwartz (25:28)
No, I know.

Ron Kronz (25:28)
Yes. And I know that you know that. But there are people listening. It doesn’t. I despise the left. I despise their openly pagan wicked witches is what they are. Their status wicked witches. And I’m not saying that we should have had Harris or whatever. I think we’ve actually been given a grace to have either of them. I think both Harris and Trump are better than we deserve. But one thing, let’s take it to the border thing. Let’s talk about the border. One thing that I’ve heard my conservative friends, and I’m a conservative guy, a conservative Christian guy, one thing I’ve heard them say about the border, they will quote Deuteronomy 28, verse 43, and I’ll read a couple verses. The sojourner who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He shall be the head and you will be the tail. So all these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you were destroyed because you would not listen to the voice of Yahweh, your God to keep his commandments and his statutes which he has commanded you.

Ron Kronz (26:42)
They leave that last verse out. They say, yeah, the, the foreigner’s getting big and we’re being overrun by aliens and they’re getting bigger. They’re actually claiming the covenant. They’re they’re doing is observing the covenant for unfaithfulness. And it never dawns on them to lead one more verse because why did this happen? You would not listen to the voice of Yahweh, your God. And there is no wall high enough. I’m not going to preach to you, but there is no wall high enough to prevent the judgment of God. If we’re unfaithful to him covenantly, we can expect covenantal curses. And that has all been forgotten from the pulpits. Even ironically, Andrea, even ironically, from people who see would. Would say they’re reformed. People don’t understand the covenants and the blessings and the sanctions and the promises. They don’t seem to understand that if I want, and I do, I’m a grandfather. If I want the safety of my children and I love my children and my great grandchildren and on and on. If I and I do, what I should be desiring is that Our nation keep the law of God?

Andrea Schwartz (27:59)
Yes. And I think a lot of people, because they’ve bought into what’s become the prevailing religion of niceness, they don’t want to challenge people. They’ll talk to somebody, like family dinners, Thanksgiving dinners. Somebody starts spouting off stuff that is really blasphemous in terms of God’s word. But you know what? You know, can we just talk about something else? Let’s leave out religion and politics as opposed to why do they think that the early church was rounded up and, you know, systemically, or the attempt was to wipe them out? Was it because they just didn’t talk nice at dinners or were they actually doing something?

Ron Kronz (28:42)
Yeah, it wasn’t because they didn’t have a welcome mat in front of their. In front of their house, that’s for sure. It comes down to the. I’m convinced of this, that the crux of the matter is covenantal. And in my book, I broke down covenants into four sections, and I call them sanctions and blessings and commands and promises. And it’s my position that we will either embrace the sanctions, blessings, commands, and promises of God, or we will be. Will suffer under the weight of them. But there is no actual escaping them. And wherever we reject the covenant of God, we’ll go to men for the same covenant. We’ll look to men and the promises of men. One might ask, well, how’s that going? Or we’ll fear the sanctions of men. We saw that during COVID We’ll tremble before the commands of men. A good example of that is. And again, I’m cheating on my exam here a little because I’m testing. I’m preaching on this this weekend. But in Titus, the Bible says in the second chapter, end of it, it says these things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.

Ron Kronz (30:00)
And the question I’m going to ask the flock down here, and I’m not the pastor of this church, I went emeritus in D.C. and they just have me preaching pretty regularly here. I’m glad to do it. And the question I’m going to ask them is, is it easy to disregard the tax man? Is it easy, you know, is it easy to disregard Pride Day? Anybody here doesn’t know about Pride Day, Pride Month? You don’t know about that. You can’t disregard it. They you’re forced to. But Christianity, by, by contrast, Christianity is easy to disregard. And all one need to do to understand that is go driving in your neighborhood and look at the signs outside of churches they’re hokey, they’re silly, they’re easily to forget. Just, I mean, like, park your keister here on Easter. That’s a real sign. Yeah, that’s. That’s. I don’t think the witches of Gates county are trembling over that. I really don’t think they are. But they will not disregard you if you bring the culture of Christ into conflict with whatever worldview is afoot. They won’t disregard that stand. Just sanded it. Just go to a university and talk about the kingdom of Christ.

Ron Kronz (31:19)
They won’t disregard you. You will be regarded. And so the apostle here says, let no one disregard you. We’ve been so easy to disregard. We’ve been. I almost can’t think we still have a majority, I’m told, of professing Christians. I know there’s a disparity between professing and actual Christians, but we’re professing Christians. Presumably we have some affiliation with Christ, some affection for him, and yet we’re the majority and we’re easy, easy peasy to disregard. And that’s a problem. And this connects to the idea because we just find it easier to give our responsibility to somebody else.

Andrea Schwartz (32:04)
So if we don’t fear God, it’s going to be obvious, and it’ll be obvious who you do fear. So people who decide they don’t have to tithe, you know, God understands. Well, don’t file your taxes, they’ll understand.

Ron Kronz (32:19)
Exactly. Exactly.

Andrea Schwartz (32:20)
Or somebody stops you, the highway patrolman stops you because you’re going 80 miles an hour. And just tell them you don’t agree with that law. You don’t identify that that’s the way it really should be. And you know he’s going to respect you because you haven’t embraced his worldview. That doesn’t happen anywhere else.

Ron Kronz (32:39)
Never, never in any other world. One of the prophets says, would you give your governor this? Would you. Would you. Would you treat your governor this way? We give the Lord, I’m sorry to say, Andrea, we give the Lord what’s conveniently left over. And Kelsey Breeze, as we like to say, it doesn’t cost as much.

Andrea Schwartz (33:02)
Right, Right. If you understand, for example, the sacrificial system is laid out in scripture. Not all clean animals were qualified to be sacrifices. The deer is a clean animal, but you couldn’t use it as a sacrifice because you didn’t have to do anything to raise that deer. You didn’t have to do anything. So our work for the Lord is going to cost us something, even though the ultimate price is paid. By Jesus, that we could never pay. But what does it mean to offer your body as a living sacrifice? I don’t know that many people even know what that means.

Ron Kronz (33:39)
They don’t. I was in Cape Town a year ago, maybe, I think it was, and I had come into a church group, a church setting, and was listening to. I think I was leading a midweek Bible study. And they. And it was their custom to review the sermon from the week before. And they had a. And they were recapping a guest speaker, and he was speaking from that very verse and Romans, 12th chapter. And, and he said this, this little gem, he said, it’s easier to sacrifice your soul than your body. And I said, what? I’m sorry, what does that even mean? Like, like. So when they killed an animal. So when they would kill an animal, is there any evidence they killed the, the, the, the calf or the goat’s soul, but not his body? I mean, it’s just absurd. It’s just absurd semantics designed to spare us from. Yeah, no, the body. You sacrifice your body, all of you, every part of your heart, soul, strength and mind. And that’s, that’s just easy, as I said in Titus, easy to disregard. You don’t have to worry about that. Just, just, just come in and, you know, like you said.

Ron Kronz (34:57)
Yeah, the tithe is too hard. You know, do something else. Just do what you feel like doing.

Andrea Schwartz (35:02)
And when you think about it, a lot of this goes down to a lack of Christian scholarship among laity and a demand that anything that I need to know, my pastor will tell me. And if he’s not bringing it up, it’s probably not essential.

Ron Kronz (35:19)
That’s right. No, that’s very apparent. I was. I. That we’ve showed this whole idea of technocracies that we have. You know, remember Anthony Fauci and Fauci we Trust and that kind of thing.

Andrea Schwartz (35:34)
Right.

Ron Kronz (35:35)
That’s just an outflow of that. We, we trust the experts. We just let the experts handle it for us. But that’s not what the Bible. In fact, I think it was Rushdoony in the revolt Fault for Against Maturity. Didn’t he write that the Lord created Adam a mature man? Yes. He didn’t. He didn’t make him a baby. He made a mature man, which is the expectation. And then when you listen to. Again, the. Just listen to the songs that are being sung. There’s nothing. They’re frilly, childish. There’s nothing, there’s very little robustness to them. They don’t. They’re not calling anybody too Much. And that, I think, is not. Not an accident.

Andrea Schwartz (36:27)
So you brought up Rushdoony one of the very telling parts in his Institutes of Biblical Law is the concept of the liability of the bystander. And if we look at our culture and all the things that people are more than ready to complain about, but there’s no virtue in complaining about something. It’s doing something. Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that everybody serves the kingdom in details the same way. However, how many times do people hear things being said, policies being put into place in their job or whatever, and they don’t speak up and say, this is not according to God’s word. But you know why? Because, you know, Ron, everybody doesn’t believe in the Bible, just like everybody, I guess, has to believe in the highway patrolman who stops you, you know, so we’re guilty because if we even say that’s bad, but don’t do anything.

Ron Kronz (37:30)
Exactly, then we’re. We’re also culpable. And even Jesus says, inasmuch as you have not done for the least of these, you’ve not done for me. He focuses on what they didn’t do, not what they felt, not their sentiment or their private. Not their prayer journal or any such thing. He focuses on what they actually did. I think part of the problem. And you touched on it inadvertently, I think. But the Lord does not need the consent of the governed. He’s able. His. His. Again, going back to the idea of covenants, sanctions, otherwise called curses. They come with or without the permission of the pagans. I. I’ve had so many conversations with college students about this, and they’ll say, I’ll have a sign. And it says, jesus is your king. And they say, how dare you? He’s not my king. I’ll say, oh, really? The wicked flee when no one. When no one pursues. What did you do in 2020 and 2021? Nobody was pursuing. Or I’ll take them over to later in the passage where it says, in the night, you’ll wish it were morning. In the morning you will wish it were night. You’ll have nightmares.

Ron Kronz (38:40)
I guarantee you’re a dissatisfied individual. And you’re afraid and you’re worried and you’re. You’re having nightmares. You’re never satisfied. In the morning, you always wish it were some other time of day. Why is that? It’s because God is actually governing over his enemies, sitting in the heavens and laughing, as it says in Psalm 2. He doesn’t need the consent. What we need is to be faithful to him and trust him to accomplish his sanctions and his blessings. And how do we get his blessings? Through obeying obedience to his commands, which, as you also said, is mutually exclusive from salvation. We’re not talking about salvation. We’re talking about the governance of life.

Andrea Schwartz (39:24)
We used to sing Onward Christian Soldiers. I don’t know if I haven’t heard it in a while, let’s put it that way, but we talk about the army of God. And the modern view is, I’m in the army. Congratulations, you’re in the army. We’re all in the army. It’s not like we have to do anything in being in this army. It’s just, I guess, another social club. Why are we in the army? You know? Well, I hope national governments will understand why they put people in their military. But we don’t understand. We just think we’re in the army. And isn’t that great?

Ron Kronz (39:58)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And there is a way out. I mean, the way out is always. Has never changed. It’s the obedience to God’s law. It really hasn’t changed. It’s not that complicated. If we would obey him, if we would turn to him in faith and repentance. I’m talking about the governance of life. It would our nation. God would bless our nation. He would bless our families. He would bless our communities. He would absolutely do that. And until that happens, the sanctions of God remain on us. And. And that’s one of the ways in which he governs creation. He governs through covenants and he does.

Andrea Schwartz (40:41)
Blessings and curses and.

Ron Kronz (40:43)
And I did a little study on covenants. He never. He, men never initiate a covenant with God. And I’m speaking against our Armenian friends. Men never initiate a covenant with God. It’s always God. He always initiates it. Anytime a man or a woman makes a covenant with God, as it were in the Bible, all they’re doing is returning to a covenant that God has already made. And this is what we need to do. We need to return to the covenant of God, which is good and right and true and lovely. His word is. Is just and good, and his commands are good. There’s no reason for us to go looking for other commands. These commands are just fine.

Andrea Schwartz (41:25)
Unless anybody thinks like, I don’t know, I’m too old to be an activist or I can’t go and be a missionary. Part and parcel of the Great Commission was to teach. Everybody has someone they could teach. You’re a grandparent, you can teach your grandkids. If you don’t have grandkids but you have people who come to your church and they have kids. You can help them. You can put forth thus says the Lord and see what the Holy Spirit does with it. It doesn’t take anything extraordinary. Even if you say it’s hard. Well, okay. The whole idea is that you’re going to obey whether or not it’s hard.

Ron Kronz (42:06)
Yeah, I mean, that’s what Jesus did. It was hard, you know, and, and that’s our model. And he says, as the Father sent me, so I send you. That’s after the resurrection. But the, the, the wounds on him were very visible afterwards. So there’s nothing to talk about. The, the. The king has said. One of the things that I’ve been preaching about for years in Africa, actually here as well, is kind of my, I don’t know, you hate to call a one verse your favorite verse, but. Because it’s all great. But I’m particularly moved by Isaiah 33:22. The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our king, the Lord is our Savior. And we’ve truncated that down. It really. We just need to view the Lord back in his property. Proper lane is he’s all of those. You’re not going to get any dispute out of your, your rank and file Christian that the Lord is our Savior. And they may even concede that he’s king, although that’s a vague. A kingdom of what. And then you start writing, then you don’t know. Well, it becomes vague and nebulous. But as far as Judge and Lawgiver, is he that or is he not?

Ron Kronz (43:26)
And the example that I give in Africa, because it’s, I think it helps, it’s a visual that helps people understand is I talk about a sailboat. You’ve got a sailboat and it’s. The sail is attached at the mast in the middle, and it’s attached top, the bottom, the front and the rear. Well, if you remove a point of attachment, even if the wind blows, the spirit of God, as it were, you lose power, you lose direction. So when you disconnect. So if you disconnect everything except for Savior, all you have is a piece of cloth flapping in the wind. You don’t have any power, you don’t have any direction. And that’s what we’ve reduced Christianity to. And until we reestablish the truth of God and his law and his right to make laws and to be the judge, to be the arbiter of all things and to be the king, like really the King, like really actually ruling over, over the affairs of men. Until we reinstate that in our minds, the things that come out of our mouth are not going to be good. We’re just going to, we’re going to wind up pandering to the unbeliever.

Ron Kronz (44:37)
We’ll wind up sacrificing the offices of Judge, Lawgiver and King to other people and they’re not going to love us, they’re not going to treat us well.

Andrea Schwartz (44:47)
In your book you had a number of things that were, I think, good digs, digs against the modern think in Christendom. And I’d like you to share a little bit about your donut analogy.

Ron Kronz (45:00)
Oh, the donut, yeah, yeah, that I actually, I remember that I had, I had gone into a convenience store in the middle of the day. It’s funny you would say that. And, and there’s this little chubby seven or eight year, maybe eight year old boy. He’s a big old fat boy and it just is. And his mother, it’s like two or three in the afternoon and apparently his mother says, baby, would you like a donut? And what do you think the little boy said? Did he say, you think he said, no, mother, I would. Wouldn’t a fruit tray, you know, or a veggie platter be more, you know, more healthy or more conducive to my health? Of course he doesn’t, he’s relying on his mother and. But he takes the donut. Of course he takes the donut. Now in 20 years or 30 years he’s going to, he’s not going to be eligible for marriage. He’s not going to be able to procreate. He’s not going to be able to do any things the Lord has called him to do. He’s going to be a slave of the medical industrial complex. He’s going to be, she’s actually grooming him for slavery by giving him a donut.

Ron Kronz (46:10)
And so I use, I follow that into a variety of directions. And so these are the doughnuts that we’re given. We’re sort of given treats and we think, oh this is wonderful, I’m given a, I’m given a donut. Well that’s okay if you’re an. It’s not okay, but it’s understandable if you’re an eight year old boy. He owes his entire life to his mother. He can’t exactly choose a different mother. Or he’s completely, he’s completely. His life is dominated by his mother and her character. He’s Reliant on her. But for those of us who are mature, those of us who are grown, we need to stop taking those donuts. We need to stop taking the easy, the easy out and saying, but what does the Lord require of me in this situation?

Andrea Schwartz (46:56)
Very good. All right, so listeners, the name of the book is the Gospel of Jeroboam and the Cult of Easy Christianity. It’s written by my guest Ron Krons, and it also has a forward by Kelly Sedon’s Martin Sel. But before we go, Ron, I didn’t really know this about you until I read the introduction of the book. You grew up as an altar boy who never colored outside the lines. You were just like the model citizen, correct?

Ron Kronz (47:26)
Yeah, yeah, I was an altar boy. I never colored outside of the line. Not exactly. I was. My parents were divorce and I just lived a life of debauchery, essentially. I followed that where it went and I, I live myself as I was. My early life was as a drug addict and the Lord redeemed me out of that. And I have no cons. I have no notion that I’m qualified to run my life, even though if the Lord is willing and may, I will have been free of narcotics for 40 years. So. But even still, I. Yeah, the Lord delivered me from that a long, long time ago. I love the, the verse in Joel that says, I will take away the gears which the locusts have eaten and the Lord has done that. He has taken them away. My mother was an alcoholic. I saw her to Christ before she died as from cancer. And the Lord has given me a victorious life. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t a good start. I was, I was sleeping in. I was homeless as a teenager. Nobody wanted. I was really, really in a bad, bad way.

Ron Kronz (48:40)
And praise the Lord. I can only say that the Lord was gracious, has been gracious to me. That’s all I can say about that. But no, I did not go the conventional route.

Andrea Schwartz (48:51)
Right. Well, you really typify the idea to who much is forgiven, much is required, and you haven’t been asleep at the wheel. And I do encourage people to read the book and at least, not at least, but especially the part where you talk about the thing that helped wake you up. We don’t have to talk about it here because then people won’t read the book. And I want them to read the book. But I’m encouraged by the fact that you don’t wait for applause. You just say, what am I supposed to do? And you do it. And I think That’s a good, good prescription for all of us.

Ron Kronz (49:26)
Yes, indeed. Yeah. You can’t. Please, you can’t serve two masters. The Bible is abundantly clear about that. You can’t serve two masters. You’re going to love the one, you’ll hate the other. And I love Christ. I love Christ and I want to serve him and I want him to be pleased with me. And that should drive all of us. But that’s never designed to stop at the, as you said, the general niceties. Sure, we should be polite, for Pete’s sake, we should be polite. We shouldn’t be jerks. But gosh, doesn’t the kingdom, the kingdom of God deserves much more. And that’s. That’s at the heart of, of my ministry, is Christ deserves more. He deserves more than he’s been getting from his people. And it’s incumbent on us to. To. To love Him. Really. To love him with our heart, soul, strength in mind.

Andrea Schwartz (50:22)
Very good. So I imagine you might have websites, social media addresses where people could find out more about what you do, and maybe if they wanted to connect with you, how would they do that?

Ron Kronz (50:34)
I would be delighted. I take all comers and you can get me at my name, Ron Krons. R O N K, R O N Z. Ron [email protected] rather. Yeah, that’s the way. And you can. People reach out to me all the time, and I make every attempt to answer them all. I’ve got a blog there. You can read the blog. You can read the blog that I mentioned about the fighting in Congo and Rwanda. And that’s where you get me, okay?

Andrea Schwartz (51:05)
And I encourage people to do so. I’ll be honest with Ron. You challenged me a lot. And sometimes when I’ve seen some of your video blogs and your. Your passion and your tears. That’s why it reminded me of Psalm 119. In other words, we should be distraught when we see the world mocking our Savior and our King. I think you’re a good example. I’m not going to put you on a pedestal because hopefully you would jump right down. I wouldn’t stay up there. But I think we should all ask ourselves, are we upsetting the enemies of God enough?

Ron Kronz (51:42)
Are they going to say at your funeral, he didn’t have an enemy, she didn’t have an enemy in the world. That is a fail. Even if I can have a closing word on that?

Andrea Schwartz (51:52)
Yes, absolutely.

Ron Kronz (51:54)
On Proverbs 28, I dealt with this in my critique of what’s called strong Christian influence, whatever that is and Proverbs 28, verse 4 those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive with them. That’s the two options, praise the wicked or strive with them. That’s it. The Word of God doesn’t offer a third option, so I would just hold that up to the listener. Are you striving with the wicked? Are you striving with them? Do they know you enough that they know you’re striving with them? Or are you praising them because you are doing one or you are doing the other?

Andrea Schwartz (52:35)
Amen. I’m not going to add to that because that’s a good final word. All right, listeners, [email protected] is how you reach us, and we look forward to talking with you next time.

Andrea Schwartz (52:48)
Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.