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This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . Andrea Schwartz (00:02) 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 co hosts are Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor, and pastor Charles Roberts. Charles Roberts (00:21) Hi, this is Charles Roberts. Welcome to another out of the Question podcast. I’m joined by host Andrea Schwartz. Andrea, how are you today? Andrea Schwartz (00:29) Fine. Looking forward to our discussion. Charles Roberts (00:32) Today we’re going to talk about the sensational publicity and some of it, rightfully so, about the recent death of Pope Francis, who died a couple of days ago, as of when we were recording this. And it’s hard to avoid any information about this because it’s all over the news media. And I suppose it’s a pretty big deal when the Pope passes away and then we’re on the verge of electing another Pope, even if you aren’t Roman Catholic. However, it also brings up the issue about the scriptural basis for having something like the papacy. And just really how significant is it that the Bishop of Rome is considered the supreme head of the church? And some people would have us think that supreme head of all churches, whether we like it or know it or not. Certainly it is hard and maybe not wise to assume that the Roman Catholic Church, even today has no influence or is not to be taken into account, certainly has and does. So Andrea and I would like to maybe chat something a little bit about this. And both of us have a background in Roman Catholicism, me as a former convert and she as a cradle Catholic. Andrea Schwartz (01:46) Yes. Charles Roberts (01:47) So maybe I’ll start off by asking you, Andrea, from your earliest days, when you were raised Catholic, was the Pope a big deal or a big issue in your spiritual life? Andrea Schwartz (02:00) Well, you have to remember that I started as a child there. I was baptized Roman Catholic. And I think it’s first of all important at the outset to differentiate between Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. Charles Roberts (02:13) Yes. Andrea Schwartz (02:14) Because the word Catholic appears in the creeds, one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. So Catholic just meant universal, that it had. Like if I said this is a. I could say this is a Catholic opinion. I’m not talking necessarily about a Roman Catholic opinion. I’m talking about somewhat universal, that all agree upon this. And in the creeds, when it talks about catholicity, it’s basically saying this is something that we all agree on, that the scope of Christ’s kingdom doesn’t have any bounds. But as you said, I was raised Roman Catholic. I went to 13 years of Catholic parochial schools. And then even the word parochial is kind of interesting because it’s actually the opposite of Catholic parochial means very narrow. But within the context of Roman Catholicism, there was this emphasis that if you as parents were Roman Catholic, whether nominally or very devoutly, your children should be raised that way. And thus my brother and my sisters and I went to Catholic school. So your question was, what about the Pope? Well, from my point of view, the Pope was there. He was a given. And there were some people who were enamored by the Pope. Andrea Schwartz (03:39) So if the Pope came to New York, which is where I grew up, that was a big deal. But I can honestly say, other than there was this guy, the Pope I don’t believe in, you know, internally it had any special significance. And then, as I like to tell people, as I went through my high school years, the religion class oftentimes was a very comparative religion class, and we’d study Hinduism and, and, and Buddhism. But you come away from that kind of experience as to, well, everybody has a right to do whatever they want. And so when I left high school, I pretty much left going to church on Sundays because now nobody was forcing me to things like that. But interestingly enough, Charles, aside from hearing that Martin Luther was a very bad guy, because that was part of Catholic history, history, I had never heard of this guy named John Calvin. And so later on coming to Faith, in my, you know, late 20s, early 30s, I was like, who is John Calvin? Only to discover that much of Protestantism that is faithful to Scripture would find its root in Calvinism. Charles Roberts (04:55) Yeah. And I. I’ll say a few words about my own Catholic journey, if I can put it that way, maybe in a little bit. But I’m glad you brought up the distinction between Catholic, Roman Catholicism, because I think this is an area where there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding, even among Roman Catholics and especially among evangelical types. And let me just say that what I will share about this is not something that’s ginned up by all of us who are Reformed and Calvinistic or theonomic. I had the privilege as a student at Westminster Theological Seminary to take three and a half years of church history. And the professor I had at the time used a series of books called the History of Christian Doctrine by Yaroslav Pelikan. P E L I K N Yaroslav Pelikan was a universally recognized church historian authority. He started out as a scholar in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and he later converted to the Orthodox Church. I had the privilege of hearing him lecture on one occasion. And this series is like four or five volumes on the history of Christian doctrine that starts, like, with A.D. 50, all the way into the medieval era is considered an unparalleled work, scholarship and history of the church. Charles Roberts (06:13) And if people will resort to resources like this, they will find the history of the Christian Church generally. And since we’re talking about it, Roman Catholicism specifically is very different than what’s portrayed in popular movies and films and the pop culture among different ethnic enclaves of Catholicism. And let me give you one example. And this is standard, I think, Christian history. You know, after the death of the apostles and the expansion of the Church in the Greek speaking world of the Roman Empire, there was no Roman Catholic Church. There was no Protestant Church either, for that matter, in terms of specific names. But you had flourishing churches in Rome, you had some in Alexandria, you had some in Damascus, you had others in Jerusalem. And so these churches and hundreds of others that were established through them developed and began to in common, read specific texts of the Bible. And so over a period of time, what we call the canon of Scripture was codified through church councils. But they were simply codifying the fact that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the four gospels that were used in almost all the churches, and they were universally recognized as authoritative. Charles Roberts (07:33) There was no Roman and Catholic Church council that said these are the four gospels that you must use. Some people like to think that, but the better scholars who will tell you, even among the Roman Catholics, no, that’s not quite the way it developed. So there was a Catholic Church, as you pointed out, the Church universal, the faith believed among all Christians that flourished for hundreds and hundreds of years. And compressing a lot of information here for the sake of brevity, what most people think of today as the Roman Catholic Church really did not emerge until the era of the early medieval time. And one thing you can find, for example, concerning their doctrine of the Eucharist, the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, that doctrine, also called transubstantiation, was never universally defined by what would be the Roman Catholic Church until about the 8th or 9th century. So that’s a lot of centuries leading up to that point where there were differing views among the various churches about what exactly is taking place in communion. And even today, the Orthodox Church defines it rather differently than the Roman Catholic Church. So all of that to say that the development of the papacy, with the Bishop of Rome being the supreme bishop over all of the others, is something else that developed over time. Charles Roberts (09:00) So the idea that this one human fallible individual, regardless of his personal piety or lack thereof, could speak universally for the entire Church, it was simply unthinkable to earliest Christians, and what they would have agreed with is that what Scripture teaches and what has come to be believed among all the churches that follow Scripture, this is what speaks for the church and for Christians. Andrea Schwartz (09:26) And let’s remember that men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and a number of the other reformers would have considered themselves and did consider themselves part of this Christian church. Their efforts were to take out that which was not scriptural and reestablish the authority of Scripture. So you could say, well, there had to be a Catholic Church because there was a church. But I’m not sure that at the time everybody called it the Catholic Church. And it’s dawned on me that fallen man has a need and a desire for centralization, not unlike when the Hebrew people told Samuel, everybody else has a king. Why can’t we have a king? Well, they had a king, but there was no internal confidence that that gave them an advantage. Of course it does. If God is your king and you’re faithful to that king, as Psalm 2 tells us, no other king has a chance. But I think the concentration of power, putting everything on the hands of one guy is a trait that says we need to have a professional class of clergy. That means that the laity doesn’t really have to study and know all that much, because we already have these people who are doing it for us. Charles Roberts (10:54) Well, I think that we can see in the New Testament not only something that is contrary to the way the Roman Catholic Church developed and the Orthodox Church, but even some Protestant churches where you do have a structure within the individual churches. And you do find, for example, in the Book of Acts, churches coming together to make some sort of authoritative pronouncement about what is accepted and what isn’t, what is a matter for discipline or what is not. And Paul goes to the Jerusalem Church and the Council of Churches there, maybe that’s too, let’s say small c council of churches to get an opinion and a ruling about Gentiles coming into the church, for example, and whether they should be circumcised or eat pagan food, sacrificed to pagan idols. Now, the way that developed over time in what would become the Roman Catholic Church is that you had one central church with a pastor who was designated a bishop. Now, the word episcopoi, the Greek term, that’s where we get the term episcopal, which means bishop, but also the term presbuteros, presbyter, which generally is translated elder. They generally are used sort of interchangeably in the New Testament. Charles Roberts (12:12) But the way things developed over Time in Roman Catholicism, based on the culture in which it grew up, was that the man who was the bishop of Rome, which meant he was the pastor over all the churches in Rome, and they were largely house churches for the most part. In the early days, you know, he became a centralized figure, the sort of thing you were referring to. So it eventually got to the point where the individual pastors of those smaller congregations, they were accountable to him, and he had the absolute authority, small a absolute authority over the clergy and over the congregations. Now, what’s curious about that is that in the more decentralized form that we see in the New Testament, you have the same thing operating. If you are a member of a church, whether it’s a denominational church or not, and you have a council of elders, or in some cases they call them deacons. This is some sort of an authority structure in the church where decisions are made and things are accomplished, and the pastor will generally sit on that council. In my church, we call it the session S E S S I O N. Charles Roberts (13:17) And the pastor’s function is different from the elders, but they all serve the same sort of purpose in administrating or administering the work of the church of Jesus Christ. So the elder board structure, in a smaller context is the diocesan structure of the Roman Catholic Church and other Episcopal churches, which has been blown up in a larger proportion. So if you shrunk it down, you would say the pastor of the church would be equal to the bishop and the elders would be equal to the priests. And of course, in reformed churches, we don’t offer sacrifices on an altar. Christ tells us in his word, in the Book of Hebrews in particular, that his sacrifice is once and forever, and it doesn’t need to keep going on and on and on. So this is another way in which whatever the fanfare may be about the death of any particular pope, and whatever its significance may or may not be, the New Testament, the Bible, the whole word of God also stands over and against some of these things and its distortions, either on the Protestant side or on the Roman Catholic side. Andrea Schwartz (14:27) And so I like the way you said administer, right in that word, administer, there’s the word minister. And Jesus said, those who be great among you will be the servants. And so somebody has to be the final say on some things. I recently got a question from somebody who said, I’m part of a homeowner’s association. For those who don’t know what that is, you have a number of people who buy into a certain portion of a development or Something and they have a homeowners association. And this allows for certain procedures or policies. So for example, I know people who their homeowners association says that they will hire the person who cuts the grass in front of everybody’s house. The idea of that is so that everything looks somewhat uniform and they want to keep up a certain level of care. What you do in the backyard is what you do in the backyard, but that’s that. Now we would never look at that and say that’s, you know, tenant of scripture. It’s a policy that if you join this group, this is what you agree to. And then you have people who head the homeowners association who basically enforce the rules. Andrea Schwartz (15:47) So the administrative functions of the elders and the bishop were to keep order. And since they’re God ordained positions, they should be looked at as appropriate because the Bible speaks to them. However, I don’t read any place in Scripture that they become the final say on what the Bible says, that the Bible is the final say on what the Bible says. And so I think the whole idea of pastors and elders have elevated to a point that says in some places will tell you what to think and what’s correct to think. And I’m not sure that the scripture ever points to that. Charles Roberts (16:31) Yeah, I think that depending on the context of the church and getting back to the Roman Catholic Church for a second, I mean, one of the challenges that we face in discussing the Roman Catholic Church, what it believes and teaches as an institution, it’s been around for over 1,000 years. And so I like to say to people, when you have an institution been around that long, just about anything you say about it can be correct. The one unique thing that the Roman Catholic Church has done, and I suppose to some extent the Eastern Orthodox Church, is they have managed to keep an organizational unity. So everything’s under one big umbrella. And although some among them may make it sound like there’s this total absolute unity, you know, the Roman Catholic Church is not like you crazy Protestants and evangelicals, where you got all these people starting their churches and all this sort of thing. Well, the fact is they do have that kind of diversity, but they’ve managed to keep it all under one umbrella. And you’ll find extreme positions within the larger big tent of Roman Catholicism from one end of the political, social and theological spectrum to the other. Charles Roberts (17:45) And I would invite anyone who would like an example of that from an official standpoint. You can get the catechism of the Catholic Church that I think was produced in the 1980s during the administration or papacy of Pope John Paul II. And it came, I think, more or less directly or indirectly out of the Second Vatican Council. The old Baltimore Catechism is what a lot of cradle Catholics of a certain age grew up learning. This catechism of the Catholic Church that was published 30, 40 years ago, I think was meant to revise and replace it. And if you go to that catechism and look up the term atheists or even Muslims, you will find that the Roman Catholic Church officially teaches that atheists may go to heaven, that people of other religions can become saved, whether or not they’ve ever believed on Christ or not. So it really. And then you’ll find some Roman Catholics who would shriek at that idea and say, well, this is an example of how our church has gone adrift and they blame it on this thing or that thing. So it’s simply not true that evangelicals and reformed people are off on all kinds of wild tangents, starting churches left to right and creating all kinds of havoc. Charles Roberts (19:00) It’s just that the Catholic Church has the similar thing. They’ve just managed to keep it under one big umbrella. Andrea Schwartz (19:05) And I’m glad you brought up the Second Vatican Council, because it brought to mind. So I grow up in the 60s, and one of the results of the council was to say that the Mass should be in English or in the native language rather than Latin. My early years, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t speak Latin or understand it. And yes, they eventually have you learn it, but the songs were in Latin. And I remember my mother taking our missals, which would be the books that you, you know, bring with you to church. And she typed up all the English responses and put them over the Latin responses. And it was a big to do. And then they had to have songs that were in English because we didn’t have songs prior to that in English. We often would have the choir in the back and it would, you know, sing songs in Latin and you’d sing along as a kid kind of imitating things, but you didn’t know. And so it was a big deal to suddenly have something that you could go to church with and understand. But the idea was, if you were going to change tradition, what you were doing was establishing a new tradition. Andrea Schwartz (20:21) And other than the idea of we get our marching orders from Scripture, it ended up being we get our marching orders from the. This centralized place, whether it’s the diocese, the. The papacy in general. Charles Roberts (20:35) I remember growing up in my neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina. I like to say that back then, in the late 50s, early 60s, you could probably have fit all the Roman Catholics in the entire state, you know, into one large room. There weren’t that many, but there were a few in the neighborhood where I grew up. And later on, when I converted to Catholicism in the the early 1970s, some of those people were still living in the neighborhood where I grew up. And they didn’t seem terribly excited about me having converted to their church. And I found out that one of the reason was not so much me personally, but they themselves had quit going to Mass. And it all was related to what you were just describing. And this has been one of the major fallouts in the Catholic Church. And we see this division even today. I mean, for hundreds and hundreds of years, you had millions of Roman Catholics whose faith was defined and shaped and their worshiping piety was shaped by the old Latin Mass. And that was a priest largely, who has back to the congregation throughout most of the Mass, chanting and speaking in a language that most people didn’t understand. Charles Roberts (21:45) And by the way, for the record, in the medieval era, there were even priests that didn’t understand Latin. They had memorized the words, but they had no idea what a lot of it meant. They were illiterate in some cases. But at any rate, when the Vatican Council came in and changed all of this, it frankly destroyed the faith of many, many people. And they not only changed all of this, and certainly it’s a good thing to be able to understand what your worship service is saying and what’s going on, but there wasn’t a lot of groundwork laid. And they not only did that, but the sort of visual things that went along with that in Roman Catholicism, the stations of the cross, the shrines to Mary and Peter, the incense, the incensing the altar, the tabernacle with the candle burning in many parishes, these things just simply disappeared. And so it was just a blow to the stomach of a lot of Catholics who just said, you know, forget this, I’m going to go to the Methodist church down the street. And I don’t think that the Catholic Church handled it very well in that regard. Charles Roberts (22:48) And so even today there are many Catholics, I think Roman Catholics, who believe that the Second Vatican Council was some sort of Masonic plot and they go to unauthorized traditional Latin Masses. And it’s a growing number of people who, they call themselves trad Catholics, traditional Catholics. Andrea Schwartz (23:07) You’ll even see signs that say traditional Mass at 8 o’clock in the morning or 5:30 in the afternoon. And modern or things like that. What’s interesting when you talked about how when the ruling or the consensus came down that we were going to allow people to understand things. You go back in history, and a lot of the early martyrs in the Reformation era were basically put to death because they translated the Bible into people’s languages so they could understand it. And the established church at the time didn’t like that. And a lot of these people, if it was found out, for example, that the Lord’s Prayer had been translated into someone’s native language, that was terrible. And these were grounds for inquisition and all that sort of stuff. Charles Roberts (23:59) Yeah. I guess for whatever reason, the people who were making those kind of rulings and putting people in the flames and burning them to death for translating the Bible into English or whatever it may be, they somehow either ignored or didn’t know anything about the Eastern Orthodox Church, which for over a thousand years had had everything in the worship service in the language of the people. You know, Greek, Russian, Slavic, Aramaic, Arabic. All of these were native languages of people. And they worshiped using their native language every Sunday. And I remember when I was having a conversation with a Greek Orthodox priest many years ago, the Catholic parish that I belonged to at that time, the then Pope, John Paul ii, had given permission for the parishes in some diocese, if the bishop thought it was good to have the old traditional Latin Mass, you know, on some sort of rotating basis, not necessarily every Sunday, but this particular parish, they decided there were enough traditional Catholics going there that they wanted this done. This is in the 1980s, so probably for the first time in 30 or 40 years, the traditional Mass was said at this parish, and there must have been 500 people there, and they weren’t all Roman Catholic. Charles Roberts (25:11) And the Greek Orthodox priest, he came to it, and I was chatting with him later, and he said, I’ll never forget when the Vatican Council pretty much decreed that everything would now be in English. He said, I realized that was going to be the end of the unity in the Catholic Church, because the Latin commonality is what held everything together. But it’s worth asking the question and thinking about this. Jesus did not speak Latin. The early apostles didn’t speak Latin. They may have understood a few words because the Romans occupied their area, but they were native Aramaic speakers. They probably understood some Greek and some Hebrew, of course. So where did this whole Latin come from? Well, it came from the Roman Empire, which was the dominant language of official Rome. And I bring this up because this is another example of a cultural influence that really has no basis in Scripture. And I think largely the structure that we were talking about earlier, where things get a little bit distorted, that too came from that cultural context. And we can extend this right on into the worship practices. I mean, there were an entire pantheon of gods and lesser deities among the Romans and the Greeks, and they had their special days and their special feasts. Charles Roberts (26:22) And a lot of that was just simply with in air quotes, baptized by the Catholic Church of the time. And the pagans were told, well, you’re no longer going to offer sacrifices to Zeus and Hercules and whatever you’ll now offer them for the saint, so and so and memory of the Blessed Mother and this sort of thing. So all of that was just simply brought over into, with a Christian veneer over the top of it. And that included also the structure of the church where you had one supreme pontiff, supreme head, which I think that was the title that the Caesars assumed as well. Pontifex Maximus, the supreme high priest of the. The Roman religion. Andrea Schwartz (27:03) And see, a lot of times people grow up into something. I was making a comment yesterday. Why was I a Catholic? Well, I was born into a Catholic family. Why is someone a Mormon? They’re born into a Mormon family. Why is somebody Muslim? They’re born into a Muslim family. That doesn’t make everything equal and everything acceptable to God. The bottom line has to be the scripture. But when you talk about the pomp and circumstance and you still see it today in some churches, Anglican churches, Episcopal churches. I remember growing up, every May, we’re coming up to May. In our grammar school, we had something called the May Procession. And we all got into our. I wouldn’t call them costumes, but the same outfits that we had gotten into for our first communion or our confirmation. And we would parade around the streets and there would be an image of Mary and we would be singing praises to Mary. I didn’t particularly like it, but it wasn’t because I had religious objections. Usually it was hot and you had to wear these nylon dresses and it was like, not a. A pleasant experience, but it’s what everybody did. Andrea Schwartz (28:13) And so you would come up with the conclusion, not that I don’t like it in principle, I just don’t like it in practice, but looking back on it now and, and understanding what Jesus’s mother, Mary would think now in that she’s, you know, she just died and she’s among the saints that live, that this would be an anathema to her in terms of people worshiping her. And so the whole idea of what you’re used to, you do it. Your behavior is there, but you don’t necessarily understand why. So when I left in my mind the idea that Christianity wasn’t worth it, I didn’t investigate anything else because, you know, I had been taught that the rest of them were just protesters, Protestants, so don’t pay any attention which God ordained it this way. But I got involved in things that were just as religious, but they didn’t have the sense of that kind of. Or Christian religion. Charles Roberts (29:12) One of the things that we’re sort of dealing with in this discussion is the replacement of biblical belief, biblical doctrine, the faith and practice of the Church of Jesus Christ that arises from belief in what Scripture teaches. And that means the older and newer Testaments versus the influx of Greek philosophical and pagan categories that modified and changed many of these things. I’ve even heard some Roman Catholic. I know, one Roman Catholic scholar in particular, who basically said that it was God’s ordained purpose to create a Christian church that included the philosophy of Aristotle and that somehow Greek philosophy was a creation of God to be used by the Christian church. And I’ve always found that kind of a striking admission. And I don’t know how many Roman Catholics actually think that way about it, but he certainly did. And he was, I think, a bona fide scholar. But I think that as we, you know, discuss this issue of the death of Pope Francis, I remember recently, like the past day or two, hearing somebody on one of the major news broadcasts saying, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Roman Catholic or not. The death of a Pope and the election of a new one has tremendous significance and implications for everyone. Charles Roberts (30:42) So I’m wondering, Andrea, do you agree with that statement? And if so, why or why not? Andrea Schwartz (30:47) You already know the answer to that. Charles Roberts (30:49) Question, but pretend I don’t. Andrea Schwartz (30:51) I’ll pretend you don’t. Again, it’s this idea. If Jesus Christ is not King of Kings and Lord of Lords, then you’re going to need somebody else to hold that position. And the whole idea that when the Pope speaks, you know, he speaks with the full authority of God. Now, what I find very interesting is you’ll see a lot of people’s comments. I hope the next Pope keeps with the progressive nature of Pope Francis. Other people say, I hope the next Pope goes a little bit more conservative and will adhere more to what we’re used to. In other words, if it depends on the man, well, then we’ve sort of laid aside the man, the fully man, fully God person of Jesus Christ, and that somehow or other we need representation on Earth because obviously Jesus Ascended, sitting at the right hand of the Father just isn’t enough. In other words, the Holy Spirit just isn’t enough. And so you’ll get Catholics in America, especially because I still am in touch with people I knew when I was younger and I went to school with. They’ll consider themselves, quote, unquote, good Catholics and still think abortion is appropriate, still think you shouldn’t speak out against people who are lesbian, homosexual, transgender, in some cases are against the killing of preborn children, but not in all cases. Andrea Schwartz (32:26) And in other cases, they’re against the killing of preborn children, but they think the death penalty, which again is ordained by scripture for certain offenses, is wrong. So this apparency of everybody thinks the same, oh, you’re Catholic. I, I think that’s almost meaningless now. Like, oh yeah, well, you wouldn’t want to date that person. He’s Catholic. Or oh yeah, that person’s a Catholic, as if you know everything about him. Well, you and I both know that there are many antinomian Christians who call themselves Protestant or pro, you know, part of Protestant churches, and they have equal error in terms of what the Bible says and what their marching orders are. Charles Roberts (33:09) Yeah, and what you just described is an example of what I was talking about earlier, where you have this institutional unity, but a significant diversity of opinion and belief, even if it contradicts official, in this case, Roman Catholic doctrine. But I think that one thing that’s worth considering, again, going back to the small C idea of being a Catholic, is the fact that when we do study the history of the Christian church, we do find in the New Testament and the development of the churches in the earliest history, a following of the New Testament pattern of having pastors, elders and deacons and congregations and mission work and the observance of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And what’s even more interesting is that when you trace, and I’m saying when you. I’m referring to the scholarship of people who have looked into this sort of thing. When you trace the development of worship in the Christian church, you find a certain framework almost from the very beginning that has endured in sometimes corrupted form, as in the case of the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church on one end of the spectrum. Charles Roberts (34:22) And then it’s been totally obliterated, as it is in many evangelical mega type churches today, where there’s really no worship to speak of. They call it that, but it doesn’t bear any resemblance whatsoever to the earliest worship of the early church. But going right from the very Beginning of the Church. Up until the modern era, the basic structure of worship was a call to worship, a confession of sin, reading of Scripture, a singing of hymns or psalms, the receiving of the Lord’s Supper, a sermon, a teaching on the Scripture and a benediction and a dismissal. And in one form or another, those things have existed from the very beginning. Now the church I pastor and the denomination that I’m in, and many other Protestant churches and Reformed churches, we regularly confess the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, we even use the Chalcedonian Creed and an Athanasians Creed. Athanasian Creed. Those are not easy to repeat in a worship service. But you know, those are as much a part of our heritage as true Catholic Christians as they are anybody who claims to be Roman Catholic. It’s just a point that the Protestant reformers themselves. You’ve mentioned John Calvin several times. Charles Roberts (35:35) I challenge anyone to get hold of a good English translation of the Institutes of the Christian Religion that you know Calvin’s magisterial work. And you will see footnote after footnote where he refers to the teachings and the writings of the early church fathers, St. Augustine and many others who are sometimes claimed to be the exclusive property of the Roman Catholic Church when they’re nothing at all of the sort. They are the heritage of all true Bible believing Christians. Andrea Schwartz (36:06) So Jesus said, you’ll know they’re Christians by the way they love one another. He also said, said, love me, keep my commandments, he who does the will of my Father. And so there weren’t denominations then, although I imagine just people being people. The Laodiceans might not have liked, the Ephesians who might not have liked, the Galatians who might not have liked, you know, whatever. We don’t have to assume that the early church had no sin. Obviously all have sinned except Christ himself. So the whole idea of acknowledging yourself as a sinner and understanding the principle of Scripture that says you can’t save yourself and no one can save you other than the Holy Spirit is how we should view brothers and sisters in the faith. He didn’t say, you’ll know they’re Christians by their denominations and then listed out all the good ones and all the bad ones. And so those lines of opposition, I’m not saying there aren’t real differences between stated beliefs, but if you’re going to deal with people one on one, and one of the things you see in the early church, it was very local, it wasn’t administered miles and miles and miles away, there might be input, there might be questions like, how do we deal with this? Andrea Schwartz (37:25) But ultimately it involved people interacting with each other, helping and supporting each other. And so I remember one of the criticisms that some of your more established reform people would say against RJ Rushdoony is that he’s just too easy on the Catholics. He’s just too easy on the Catholics. And one person wouldn’t even write a foreword to one of his books that we ended up Publishing after Dr. Rushdoony passed away because he was just too easy on the Catholics. Well, Rushdoony’s theology said, those who are in the family of God are the elective God. And. And this has been established before the foundations of the world and judge them the way we’re supposed to judge in terms of righteous judgments, in terms of how they line up with Scripture. But I even had a conversation with a man on Easter who said, oh, the Catholics, you know, I just. And he just saying Catholic was enough to dismiss someone. And I looked at him and I said, there are true believers in the Catholic Church. And. And if you say they’re not because they’re in the Catholic Church, then you must think that God’s election has to do with someone passing a theology test, as opposed to actually love the Lord, acknowledge their sin, and live with the prompting and obedience to the Holy Spirit. Andrea Schwartz (38:48) So I think we’ve gotten into these factions and. And I think in a lot of ways, Charles, it’s sort of like off the point. Charles Roberts (38:54) Yeah, I used to say that the average evangelical Christian’s understanding of church history went something like this. You had the Jesus and the apostles and the Apostle Paul, and then for maybe over a thousand years, you had not really much of anything. And then you had this guy Martin Luther, and then you had Billy Graham. And that’s their understanding of church history. The fact is, the Protestant Reformation took place in the 1500s. Prior to that time, there was nothing. There was no Protestant Church, there was the Roman Catholic Church. There were heretical sects and groups. It was the Orthodox Church. And so you’ve either got to say that there never were any Christians after the Apostle Paul died until Billy Graham came on the scene, or Martin Luther or Calvin or whoever you say, or you’ve got to account for the fact that the Lord moved through the things that existed at the time and all of their faulty nature to accomplish his will and save his elect people. So, yes, the Lord doesn’t have to go by what we think he should be doing and tell him what to do. On the other hand, he has revealed his perfect, infallible Word in Holy Scripture, and Holy Scripture must be interpreted and understood. Charles Roberts (40:10) And one of the great blessings of the Protestant Reformation is that we have not only the Bible in our own language, but we can read it and understand it for ourselves. But as R.C. sproul once commented, along with that is the responsibility to read it and understand it correctly. And I think this is where the creeds and the confessions of the Church can be a great help. Andrea Schwartz (40:31) And there has to be a basic humility that comes along with if God has opened your eyes to see that certain things are true and other things are not, how you communicate those things is important. And I wouldn’t say how you do it is just as important as the truth itself, but it’s a close second. Because like I said, most people do believe because that’s what they have done and they have believed. So if you’re going to help someone come to an understanding of something, their presuppositions have to change, their ideas have to be altered enough to even understand what you’re saying. And then I believe we’ve done our job and the Holy Spirit does the rest. And I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind. Charles Roberts (41:20) Well, I totally agree, and I will say this much autobiographically, you mentioned this earlier about, you know, you’re being raised a Catholic. Well, I was raised in the Methodist Church. And at some point in my teenage years, it occurred to me that the only reason I was a Methodist is because I was born into a family that that’s where I was baptized in that church and was confirmed in that church. And that to me didn’t seem like an altogether good reason. And so I started exploring and I knew a number of Roman Catholic kids who had left parochial schools to come into the public schools. And that was the conduit for me joining the Roman Catholic Church. But what I found later was that the church I thought I was joining really did not exist. I mean, obviously the parish did and the structure was there. But I think a lot of people, they get a romanticized view of Roman Catholicism that’s based on Hollywood movies like the Shoes of the Fisherman or Becket or Quo Vadis. And, you know, they get all starry eyed with that and think, this is, you know, this is the church I’ve been. Charles Roberts (42:27) This is the church of all ages. But the reality is rather different. And I think maybe to sum all of this up, the death of Pope Francis is an example of that. Where you had a papacy and a pope who espoused on one side certain traditional Catholic doctrines. And on the other, he apparently said it was okay for priests to bless so called same sex marriages. He encouraged any and everybody to get the COVID vaccine, even to the point where there were many Catholics who wanted to take a religious exception where they was mandated. But because of this Pope’s pronouncements, they were in a bind. You know, they said, well, you want to take an exception to getting this vaccine, but your Pope has said you should get it. So he was a real mixed bag, and many of these men who have been in that position have been that way. So I’m certainly not happy that the man died. But on the other hand, I think we should recognize that human beings of all sorts come and go, but the word of God endures forever as we read in the book of Isaiah. Andrea Schwartz (43:32) Okay, so I’m going to share an anecdote and I sort of did this to you as we were doing some preliminary discussions. But back in 1986, 87, there was a movie that came out called Saving Grace. Now, how did I find out about this movie? Quite accidentally, for those of you who remember Blockbuster, when Blockbuster would have sales, they would oftentimes put their VHS tapes at a discount price. And so it was not unusual for my husband and me and sometimes the kids to go in and buy up titles for a dollar. And this looks like a good thing. Anyway, so we watch this movie, Saving Grace, and the premise is that a man is elected Pope. And it starts off seeing how they do their election process. He doesn’t really look like he. He’s very uncomfortable with it, but he says, you know, I accept in the name of the Lord. And then you get to see how the Pope lives and all the pomp and circumstance. And ultimately what happens is he feels very out of touch. When he became a priest, he became a priest because he enjoyed working with people, helping people, administering God’s love through his acts of service. Andrea Schwartz (44:52) And so he’s going through a crisis. Like, I’m just like this figurehead. What does it matter? Anyway, as the story goes, one day he’s out gardening in the Vatican and a piece of paper starts to blow away. And he tries to go get it. And he opens the door and he gets there, but the door closes and now he’s locked out of the Vatican property. And he sort of enjoys it because he’s going around the. I guess the Italian soccer team had just won the World cup, and he’s out among people, and he really likes the freedom of it. Anyway, previously there had been a young girl who had come to the Vatican to say, our village doesn’t have a priest. And so he uses this as an opportunity to go to that village, and he sees a devastated people who are hopeless, who are just basically, they have no hope. Anyway, so we watched the movie and we liked it, and I went and brought it up, and I sat down with Dr. Rushdoony, and we watched it together. I cannot tell you how. I mean, I never. I’d never really gone to the movies with Rush, so I can’t really say how he normally reacted, but as the story progresses, he was, like, clapping his hands, going, this is Christian reconstruction. Andrea Schwartz (46:09) This is Christian reconstruction. And I would encourage people, you can watch the movie for free on YouTube. It used to not be available on a service, but I rewatched it yesterday on YouTube so you can see it. But it had nothing to do with Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is Christian reconstruction. It’s what a believer does in terms of putting faith into action. And I think you’ll end up smiling. And for those who don’t know a lot about Roman Catholicism, you’ll get a dose of it, because you’ll see at the beginning of the film what the whole pomp and circumstance looks like. And it ends with him giving an Easter address to the crowd because he’s back now being the Pope. And of course, we just had the Pope that died on Monday give his papal address. So I think it’s a timely thing to watch. Charles Roberts (47:00) But. Andrea Schwartz (47:00) But the important part is, what is Christian reconstruction? It’s building the kingdom. And you actually see this depicted in the movie, not just building, but how you deal with the enemies of God in the process of them trying to destroy your work. So I highly recommend the movie. It’s really. It remains one of my favorites ever. And maybe that was because I got a chance to watch it with Rush, but he then asked me at the time, can you buy copies of this? And I think to get a copy of VHS cost like 20 to $50. I don’t remember at the time, but I sent him a couple, and he passed it around to the staff. He said, they need to see this. So I think that we do need to separate sometimes form from content, that the most important aspect of our faith is content. And sometimes it’s going to come in different forms. And I think especially you, Charles, who, in your journey, I think, did the smorgasbord of trying almost everything to. In your search for truth, but that you’re going to find some aspects of truth along the way. But of course, Jesus is the capital t Truth. Charles Roberts (48:11) Yeah. And I did see the movie at your recommendation, and I did see it on YouTube. And you know, what I took away from it, apart from the things that you’ve already mentioned, is that you have here an individual, regardless of who he is, who is attempting to either consciously or unconsciously live out the teachings of Jesus, that by this they will know you’re my disciple if you have love for one another. Well, what does that look like? It’s not just having, you know, warm, fuzzy feelings about somebody. It means putting your shoulder to the wheel and getting to work to help people who need help. In this case, it was, like you said, a village that they needed water and a few other, you know, essentials. So, yeah, I can see why Dr. Rashtuni was so excited about it from that standpoint. And yeah, if we’re going to follow Jesus teachings, then that looks like something. It’s not. Just something that feels a certain way. Andrea Schwartz (48:58) And when you are obedient to scripture, guess who will recognize it? The people God has called will gravitate towards what you’re doing and your endeavor. And the people who hate God will also notice you. And I think that was very clear depicted in the movie. In terms of movies, let me say I also watched recently the latest movie on bishops and cardinals and the papacy called Conclave, and I don’t recommend it because it’s pretty obvious that the movie has a point. I. I think maybe they knew that this pope was either ill or something like that. But within it you get to see even the various factions within this homogenous group, which isn’t all that homogenous, those who want to promulgate sexual preferences and things of that nature. So I Saving Grace is a much better movie to watch, but you can see on the flip side how it’s divorced from serving people. And it’s much more in the movie, the more recent one, on pushing an agenda. And it, if you, you know, make it through the movie, it’s not God’s agenda. Charles Roberts (50:13) Well, Andrea, I think we’ve plumb the depths of these issues. And again, I mean, to some extent it is a big occasion when a pope dies and a new one is being elected, if for no other reason. It’s all over the news and that kind of thing. But I hope our listeners have gained something from this discussion. And I think you’ll agree we would love to hear from folks who may want to comment or make suggestions for other topics. Would you share the email address they can use for that? Andrea Schwartz (50:41) OutofthequestionPodcast@gmail.com. that’s how you reach us. And as far as the book that a particular person did not want to write an introduction for, it’s called the Cure of Souls, and it’s about this is by Rushdoony, and it’s about confession and what it actually means. And I think that’s a very useful understanding of confession, the faith and the need for confession, and divorce it from the standard idea of the Catholic confessional and things of that nature. But it’s a very potent book and it really talks about the basis of our faith. So I would recommend that one. Charles Roberts (51:25) And I think we’re in the midst of a spring sale or something like that, the Chalcedon.edu website, so it’s a good time for people to avail themselves of that. Very excellent title. Thank you for mentioning the title, because I was going to ask you what that was. Andrea Schwartz (51:38) Yes, very good. All right, folks, thanks for joining us and we’ll talk with you next time. Thanks for listening to out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu…

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335: Does the Pope Matter? 51:55

9 days ago51:55

51:55

This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . Andrea Schwartz (00:02) 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 co hosts are Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor, and pastor Charles Roberts. Charles Roberts (00:21) Hi, this is Charles Roberts. Welcome to another out of the Question podcast. I’m joined by host Andrea Schwartz. Andrea, how are you today? Andrea Schwartz (00:29) Fine. Looking forward to our discussion. Charles Roberts (00:32) Today we’re going to talk about the sensational publicity and some of it, rightfully so, about the recent death of Pope Francis, who died a couple of days ago, as of when we were recording this. And it’s hard to avoid any information about this because it’s all over the news media. And I suppose it’s a pretty big deal when the Pope passes away and then we’re on the verge of electing another Pope, even if you aren’t Roman Catholic. However, it also brings up the issue about the scriptural basis for having something like the papacy. And just really how significant is it that the Bishop of Rome is considered the supreme head of the church? And some people would have us think that supreme head of all churches, whether we like it or know it or not. Certainly it is hard and maybe not wise to assume that the Roman Catholic Church, even today has no influence or is not to be taken into account, certainly has and does. So Andrea and I would like to maybe chat something a little bit about this. And both of us have a background in Roman Catholicism, me as a former convert and she as a cradle Catholic. Andrea Schwartz (01:46) Yes. Charles Roberts (01:47) So maybe I’ll start off by asking you, Andrea, from your earliest days, when you were raised Catholic, was the Pope a big deal or a big issue in your spiritual life? Andrea Schwartz (02:00) Well, you have to remember that I started as a child there. I was baptized Roman Catholic. And I think it’s first of all important at the outset to differentiate between Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. Charles Roberts (02:13) Yes. Andrea Schwartz (02:14) Because the word Catholic appears in the creeds, one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. So Catholic just meant universal, that it had. Like if I said this is a. I could say this is a Catholic opinion. I’m not talking necessarily about a Roman Catholic opinion. I’m talking about somewhat universal, that all agree upon this. And in the creeds, when it talks about catholicity, it’s basically saying this is something that we all agree on, that the scope of Christ’s kingdom doesn’t have any bounds. But as you said, I was raised Roman Catholic. I went to 13 years of Catholic parochial schools. And then even the word parochial is kind of interesting because it’s actually the opposite of Catholic parochial means very narrow. But within the context of Roman Catholicism, there was this emphasis that if you as parents were Roman Catholic, whether nominally or very devoutly, your children should be raised that way. And thus my brother and my sisters and I went to Catholic school. So your question was, what about the Pope? Well, from my point of view, the Pope was there. He was a given. And there were some people who were enamored by the Pope. Andrea Schwartz (03:39) So if the Pope came to New York, which is where I grew up, that was a big deal. But I can honestly say, other than there was this guy, the Pope I don’t believe in, you know, internally it had any special significance. And then, as I like to tell people, as I went through my high school years, the religion class oftentimes was a very comparative religion class, and we’d study Hinduism and, and, and Buddhism. But you come away from that kind of experience as to, well, everybody has a right to do whatever they want. And so when I left high school, I pretty much left going to church on Sundays because now nobody was forcing me to things like that. But interestingly enough, Charles, aside from hearing that Martin Luther was a very bad guy, because that was part of Catholic history, history, I had never heard of this guy named John Calvin. And so later on coming to Faith, in my, you know, late 20s, early 30s, I was like, who is John Calvin? Only to discover that much of Protestantism that is faithful to Scripture would find its root in Calvinism. Charles Roberts (04:55) Yeah. And I. I’ll say a few words about my own Catholic journey, if I can put it that way, maybe in a little bit. But I’m glad you brought up the distinction between Catholic, Roman Catholicism, because I think this is an area where there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding, even among Roman Catholics and especially among evangelical types. And let me just say that what I will share about this is not something that’s ginned up by all of us who are Reformed and Calvinistic or theonomic. I had the privilege as a student at Westminster Theological Seminary to take three and a half years of church history. And the professor I had at the time used a series of books called the History of Christian Doctrine by Yaroslav Pelikan. P E L I K N Yaroslav Pelikan was a universally recognized church historian authority. He started out as a scholar in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and he later converted to the Orthodox Church. I had the privilege of hearing him lecture on one occasion. And this series is like four or five volumes on the history of Christian doctrine that starts, like, with A.D. 50, all the way into the medieval era is considered an unparalleled work, scholarship and history of the church. Charles Roberts (06:13) And if people will resort to resources like this, they will find the history of the Christian Church generally. And since we’re talking about it, Roman Catholicism specifically is very different than what’s portrayed in popular movies and films and the pop culture among different ethnic enclaves of Catholicism. And let me give you one example. And this is standard, I think, Christian history. You know, after the death of the apostles and the expansion of the Church in the Greek speaking world of the Roman Empire, there was no Roman Catholic Church. There was no Protestant Church either, for that matter, in terms of specific names. But you had flourishing churches in Rome, you had some in Alexandria, you had some in Damascus, you had others in Jerusalem. And so these churches and hundreds of others that were established through them developed and began to in common, read specific texts of the Bible. And so over a period of time, what we call the canon of Scripture was codified through church councils. But they were simply codifying the fact that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the four gospels that were used in almost all the churches, and they were universally recognized as authoritative. Charles Roberts (07:33) There was no Roman and Catholic Church council that said these are the four gospels that you must use. Some people like to think that, but the better scholars who will tell you, even among the Roman Catholics, no, that’s not quite the way it developed. So there was a Catholic Church, as you pointed out, the Church universal, the faith believed among all Christians that flourished for hundreds and hundreds of years. And compressing a lot of information here for the sake of brevity, what most people think of today as the Roman Catholic Church really did not emerge until the era of the early medieval time. And one thing you can find, for example, concerning their doctrine of the Eucharist, the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, that doctrine, also called transubstantiation, was never universally defined by what would be the Roman Catholic Church until about the 8th or 9th century. So that’s a lot of centuries leading up to that point where there were differing views among the various churches about what exactly is taking place in communion. And even today, the Orthodox Church defines it rather differently than the Roman Catholic Church. So all of that to say that the development of the papacy, with the Bishop of Rome being the supreme bishop over all of the others, is something else that developed over time. Charles Roberts (09:00) So the idea that this one human fallible individual, regardless of his personal piety or lack thereof, could speak universally for the entire Church, it was simply unthinkable to earliest Christians, and what they would have agreed with is that what Scripture teaches and what has come to be believed among all the churches that follow Scripture, this is what speaks for the church and for Christians. Andrea Schwartz (09:26) And let’s remember that men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and a number of the other reformers would have considered themselves and did consider themselves part of this Christian church. Their efforts were to take out that which was not scriptural and reestablish the authority of Scripture. So you could say, well, there had to be a Catholic Church because there was a church. But I’m not sure that at the time everybody called it the Catholic Church. And it’s dawned on me that fallen man has a need and a desire for centralization, not unlike when the Hebrew people told Samuel, everybody else has a king. Why can’t we have a king? Well, they had a king, but there was no internal confidence that that gave them an advantage. Of course it does. If God is your king and you’re faithful to that king, as Psalm 2 tells us, no other king has a chance. But I think the concentration of power, putting everything on the hands of one guy is a trait that says we need to have a professional class of clergy. That means that the laity doesn’t really have to study and know all that much, because we already have these people who are doing it for us. Charles Roberts (10:54) Well, I think that we can see in the New Testament not only something that is contrary to the way the Roman Catholic Church developed and the Orthodox Church, but even some Protestant churches where you do have a structure within the individual churches. And you do find, for example, in the Book of Acts, churches coming together to make some sort of authoritative pronouncement about what is accepted and what isn’t, what is a matter for discipline or what is not. And Paul goes to the Jerusalem Church and the Council of Churches there, maybe that’s too, let’s say small c council of churches to get an opinion and a ruling about Gentiles coming into the church, for example, and whether they should be circumcised or eat pagan food, sacrificed to pagan idols. Now, the way that developed over time in what would become the Roman Catholic Church is that you had one central church with a pastor who was designated a bishop. Now, the word episcopoi, the Greek term, that’s where we get the term episcopal, which means bishop, but also the term presbuteros, presbyter, which generally is translated elder. They generally are used sort of interchangeably in the New Testament. Charles Roberts (12:12) But the way things developed over Time in Roman Catholicism, based on the culture in which it grew up, was that the man who was the bishop of Rome, which meant he was the pastor over all the churches in Rome, and they were largely house churches for the most part. In the early days, you know, he became a centralized figure, the sort of thing you were referring to. So it eventually got to the point where the individual pastors of those smaller congregations, they were accountable to him, and he had the absolute authority, small a absolute authority over the clergy and over the congregations. Now, what’s curious about that is that in the more decentralized form that we see in the New Testament, you have the same thing operating. If you are a member of a church, whether it’s a denominational church or not, and you have a council of elders, or in some cases they call them deacons. This is some sort of an authority structure in the church where decisions are made and things are accomplished, and the pastor will generally sit on that council. In my church, we call it the session S E S S I O N. Charles Roberts (13:17) And the pastor’s function is different from the elders, but they all serve the same sort of purpose in administrating or administering the work of the church of Jesus Christ. So the elder board structure, in a smaller context is the diocesan structure of the Roman Catholic Church and other Episcopal churches, which has been blown up in a larger proportion. So if you shrunk it down, you would say the pastor of the church would be equal to the bishop and the elders would be equal to the priests. And of course, in reformed churches, we don’t offer sacrifices on an altar. Christ tells us in his word, in the Book of Hebrews in particular, that his sacrifice is once and forever, and it doesn’t need to keep going on and on and on. So this is another way in which whatever the fanfare may be about the death of any particular pope, and whatever its significance may or may not be, the New Testament, the Bible, the whole word of God also stands over and against some of these things and its distortions, either on the Protestant side or on the Roman Catholic side. Andrea Schwartz (14:27) And so I like the way you said administer, right in that word, administer, there’s the word minister. And Jesus said, those who be great among you will be the servants. And so somebody has to be the final say on some things. I recently got a question from somebody who said, I’m part of a homeowner’s association. For those who don’t know what that is, you have a number of people who buy into a certain portion of a development or Something and they have a homeowners association. And this allows for certain procedures or policies. So for example, I know people who their homeowners association says that they will hire the person who cuts the grass in front of everybody’s house. The idea of that is so that everything looks somewhat uniform and they want to keep up a certain level of care. What you do in the backyard is what you do in the backyard, but that’s that. Now we would never look at that and say that’s, you know, tenant of scripture. It’s a policy that if you join this group, this is what you agree to. And then you have people who head the homeowners association who basically enforce the rules. Andrea Schwartz (15:47) So the administrative functions of the elders and the bishop were to keep order. And since they’re God ordained positions, they should be looked at as appropriate because the Bible speaks to them. However, I don’t read any place in Scripture that they become the final say on what the Bible says, that the Bible is the final say on what the Bible says. And so I think the whole idea of pastors and elders have elevated to a point that says in some places will tell you what to think and what’s correct to think. And I’m not sure that the scripture ever points to that. Charles Roberts (16:31) Yeah, I think that depending on the context of the church and getting back to the Roman Catholic Church for a second, I mean, one of the challenges that we face in discussing the Roman Catholic Church, what it believes and teaches as an institution, it’s been around for over 1,000 years. And so I like to say to people, when you have an institution been around that long, just about anything you say about it can be correct. The one unique thing that the Roman Catholic Church has done, and I suppose to some extent the Eastern Orthodox Church, is they have managed to keep an organizational unity. So everything’s under one big umbrella. And although some among them may make it sound like there’s this total absolute unity, you know, the Roman Catholic Church is not like you crazy Protestants and evangelicals, where you got all these people starting their churches and all this sort of thing. Well, the fact is they do have that kind of diversity, but they’ve managed to keep it all under one umbrella. And you’ll find extreme positions within the larger big tent of Roman Catholicism from one end of the political, social and theological spectrum to the other. Charles Roberts (17:45) And I would invite anyone who would like an example of that from an official standpoint. You can get the catechism of the Catholic Church that I think was produced in the 1980s during the administration or papacy of Pope John Paul II. And it came, I think, more or less directly or indirectly out of the Second Vatican Council. The old Baltimore Catechism is what a lot of cradle Catholics of a certain age grew up learning. This catechism of the Catholic Church that was published 30, 40 years ago, I think was meant to revise and replace it. And if you go to that catechism and look up the term atheists or even Muslims, you will find that the Roman Catholic Church officially teaches that atheists may go to heaven, that people of other religions can become saved, whether or not they’ve ever believed on Christ or not. So it really. And then you’ll find some Roman Catholics who would shriek at that idea and say, well, this is an example of how our church has gone adrift and they blame it on this thing or that thing. So it’s simply not true that evangelicals and reformed people are off on all kinds of wild tangents, starting churches left to right and creating all kinds of havoc. Charles Roberts (19:00) It’s just that the Catholic Church has the similar thing. They’ve just managed to keep it under one big umbrella. Andrea Schwartz (19:05) And I’m glad you brought up the Second Vatican Council, because it brought to mind. So I grow up in the 60s, and one of the results of the council was to say that the Mass should be in English or in the native language rather than Latin. My early years, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t speak Latin or understand it. And yes, they eventually have you learn it, but the songs were in Latin. And I remember my mother taking our missals, which would be the books that you, you know, bring with you to church. And she typed up all the English responses and put them over the Latin responses. And it was a big to do. And then they had to have songs that were in English because we didn’t have songs prior to that in English. We often would have the choir in the back and it would, you know, sing songs in Latin and you’d sing along as a kid kind of imitating things, but you didn’t know. And so it was a big deal to suddenly have something that you could go to church with and understand. But the idea was, if you were going to change tradition, what you were doing was establishing a new tradition. Andrea Schwartz (20:21) And other than the idea of we get our marching orders from Scripture, it ended up being we get our marching orders from the. This centralized place, whether it’s the diocese, the. The papacy in general. Charles Roberts (20:35) I remember growing up in my neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina. I like to say that back then, in the late 50s, early 60s, you could probably have fit all the Roman Catholics in the entire state, you know, into one large room. There weren’t that many, but there were a few in the neighborhood where I grew up. And later on, when I converted to Catholicism in the the early 1970s, some of those people were still living in the neighborhood where I grew up. And they didn’t seem terribly excited about me having converted to their church. And I found out that one of the reason was not so much me personally, but they themselves had quit going to Mass. And it all was related to what you were just describing. And this has been one of the major fallouts in the Catholic Church. And we see this division even today. I mean, for hundreds and hundreds of years, you had millions of Roman Catholics whose faith was defined and shaped and their worshiping piety was shaped by the old Latin Mass. And that was a priest largely, who has back to the congregation throughout most of the Mass, chanting and speaking in a language that most people didn’t understand. Charles Roberts (21:45) And by the way, for the record, in the medieval era, there were even priests that didn’t understand Latin. They had memorized the words, but they had no idea what a lot of it meant. They were illiterate in some cases. But at any rate, when the Vatican Council came in and changed all of this, it frankly destroyed the faith of many, many people. And they not only changed all of this, and certainly it’s a good thing to be able to understand what your worship service is saying and what’s going on, but there wasn’t a lot of groundwork laid. And they not only did that, but the sort of visual things that went along with that in Roman Catholicism, the stations of the cross, the shrines to Mary and Peter, the incense, the incensing the altar, the tabernacle with the candle burning in many parishes, these things just simply disappeared. And so it was just a blow to the stomach of a lot of Catholics who just said, you know, forget this, I’m going to go to the Methodist church down the street. And I don’t think that the Catholic Church handled it very well in that regard. Charles Roberts (22:48) And so even today there are many Catholics, I think Roman Catholics, who believe that the Second Vatican Council was some sort of Masonic plot and they go to unauthorized traditional Latin Masses. And it’s a growing number of people who, they call themselves trad Catholics, traditional Catholics. Andrea Schwartz (23:07) You’ll even see signs that say traditional Mass at 8 o’clock in the morning or 5:30 in the afternoon. And modern or things like that. What’s interesting when you talked about how when the ruling or the consensus came down that we were going to allow people to understand things. You go back in history, and a lot of the early martyrs in the Reformation era were basically put to death because they translated the Bible into people’s languages so they could understand it. And the established church at the time didn’t like that. And a lot of these people, if it was found out, for example, that the Lord’s Prayer had been translated into someone’s native language, that was terrible. And these were grounds for inquisition and all that sort of stuff. Charles Roberts (23:59) Yeah. I guess for whatever reason, the people who were making those kind of rulings and putting people in the flames and burning them to death for translating the Bible into English or whatever it may be, they somehow either ignored or didn’t know anything about the Eastern Orthodox Church, which for over a thousand years had had everything in the worship service in the language of the people. You know, Greek, Russian, Slavic, Aramaic, Arabic. All of these were native languages of people. And they worshiped using their native language every Sunday. And I remember when I was having a conversation with a Greek Orthodox priest many years ago, the Catholic parish that I belonged to at that time, the then Pope, John Paul ii, had given permission for the parishes in some diocese, if the bishop thought it was good to have the old traditional Latin Mass, you know, on some sort of rotating basis, not necessarily every Sunday, but this particular parish, they decided there were enough traditional Catholics going there that they wanted this done. This is in the 1980s, so probably for the first time in 30 or 40 years, the traditional Mass was said at this parish, and there must have been 500 people there, and they weren’t all Roman Catholic. Charles Roberts (25:11) And the Greek Orthodox priest, he came to it, and I was chatting with him later, and he said, I’ll never forget when the Vatican Council pretty much decreed that everything would now be in English. He said, I realized that was going to be the end of the unity in the Catholic Church, because the Latin commonality is what held everything together. But it’s worth asking the question and thinking about this. Jesus did not speak Latin. The early apostles didn’t speak Latin. They may have understood a few words because the Romans occupied their area, but they were native Aramaic speakers. They probably understood some Greek and some Hebrew, of course. So where did this whole Latin come from? Well, it came from the Roman Empire, which was the dominant language of official Rome. And I bring this up because this is another example of a cultural influence that really has no basis in Scripture. And I think largely the structure that we were talking about earlier, where things get a little bit distorted, that too came from that cultural context. And we can extend this right on into the worship practices. I mean, there were an entire pantheon of gods and lesser deities among the Romans and the Greeks, and they had their special days and their special feasts. Charles Roberts (26:22) And a lot of that was just simply with in air quotes, baptized by the Catholic Church of the time. And the pagans were told, well, you’re no longer going to offer sacrifices to Zeus and Hercules and whatever you’ll now offer them for the saint, so and so and memory of the Blessed Mother and this sort of thing. So all of that was just simply brought over into, with a Christian veneer over the top of it. And that included also the structure of the church where you had one supreme pontiff, supreme head, which I think that was the title that the Caesars assumed as well. Pontifex Maximus, the supreme high priest of the. The Roman religion. Andrea Schwartz (27:03) And see, a lot of times people grow up into something. I was making a comment yesterday. Why was I a Catholic? Well, I was born into a Catholic family. Why is someone a Mormon? They’re born into a Mormon family. Why is somebody Muslim? They’re born into a Muslim family. That doesn’t make everything equal and everything acceptable to God. The bottom line has to be the scripture. But when you talk about the pomp and circumstance and you still see it today in some churches, Anglican churches, Episcopal churches. I remember growing up, every May, we’re coming up to May. In our grammar school, we had something called the May Procession. And we all got into our. I wouldn’t call them costumes, but the same outfits that we had gotten into for our first communion or our confirmation. And we would parade around the streets and there would be an image of Mary and we would be singing praises to Mary. I didn’t particularly like it, but it wasn’t because I had religious objections. Usually it was hot and you had to wear these nylon dresses and it was like, not a. A pleasant experience, but it’s what everybody did. Andrea Schwartz (28:13) And so you would come up with the conclusion, not that I don’t like it in principle, I just don’t like it in practice, but looking back on it now and, and understanding what Jesus’s mother, Mary would think now in that she’s, you know, she just died and she’s among the saints that live, that this would be an anathema to her in terms of people worshiping her. And so the whole idea of what you’re used to, you do it. Your behavior is there, but you don’t necessarily understand why. So when I left in my mind the idea that Christianity wasn’t worth it, I didn’t investigate anything else because, you know, I had been taught that the rest of them were just protesters, Protestants, so don’t pay any attention which God ordained it this way. But I got involved in things that were just as religious, but they didn’t have the sense of that kind of. Or Christian religion. Charles Roberts (29:12) One of the things that we’re sort of dealing with in this discussion is the replacement of biblical belief, biblical doctrine, the faith and practice of the Church of Jesus Christ that arises from belief in what Scripture teaches. And that means the older and newer Testaments versus the influx of Greek philosophical and pagan categories that modified and changed many of these things. I’ve even heard some Roman Catholic. I know, one Roman Catholic scholar in particular, who basically said that it was God’s ordained purpose to create a Christian church that included the philosophy of Aristotle and that somehow Greek philosophy was a creation of God to be used by the Christian church. And I’ve always found that kind of a striking admission. And I don’t know how many Roman Catholics actually think that way about it, but he certainly did. And he was, I think, a bona fide scholar. But I think that as we, you know, discuss this issue of the death of Pope Francis, I remember recently, like the past day or two, hearing somebody on one of the major news broadcasts saying, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Roman Catholic or not. The death of a Pope and the election of a new one has tremendous significance and implications for everyone. Charles Roberts (30:42) So I’m wondering, Andrea, do you agree with that statement? And if so, why or why not? Andrea Schwartz (30:47) You already know the answer to that. Charles Roberts (30:49) Question, but pretend I don’t. Andrea Schwartz (30:51) I’ll pretend you don’t. Again, it’s this idea. If Jesus Christ is not King of Kings and Lord of Lords, then you’re going to need somebody else to hold that position. And the whole idea that when the Pope speaks, you know, he speaks with the full authority of God. Now, what I find very interesting is you’ll see a lot of people’s comments. I hope the next Pope keeps with the progressive nature of Pope Francis. Other people say, I hope the next Pope goes a little bit more conservative and will adhere more to what we’re used to. In other words, if it depends on the man, well, then we’ve sort of laid aside the man, the fully man, fully God person of Jesus Christ, and that somehow or other we need representation on Earth because obviously Jesus Ascended, sitting at the right hand of the Father just isn’t enough. In other words, the Holy Spirit just isn’t enough. And so you’ll get Catholics in America, especially because I still am in touch with people I knew when I was younger and I went to school with. They’ll consider themselves, quote, unquote, good Catholics and still think abortion is appropriate, still think you shouldn’t speak out against people who are lesbian, homosexual, transgender, in some cases are against the killing of preborn children, but not in all cases. Andrea Schwartz (32:26) And in other cases, they’re against the killing of preborn children, but they think the death penalty, which again is ordained by scripture for certain offenses, is wrong. So this apparency of everybody thinks the same, oh, you’re Catholic. I, I think that’s almost meaningless now. Like, oh yeah, well, you wouldn’t want to date that person. He’s Catholic. Or oh yeah, that person’s a Catholic, as if you know everything about him. Well, you and I both know that there are many antinomian Christians who call themselves Protestant or pro, you know, part of Protestant churches, and they have equal error in terms of what the Bible says and what their marching orders are. Charles Roberts (33:09) Yeah, and what you just described is an example of what I was talking about earlier, where you have this institutional unity, but a significant diversity of opinion and belief, even if it contradicts official, in this case, Roman Catholic doctrine. But I think that one thing that’s worth considering, again, going back to the small C idea of being a Catholic, is the fact that when we do study the history of the Christian church, we do find in the New Testament and the development of the churches in the earliest history, a following of the New Testament pattern of having pastors, elders and deacons and congregations and mission work and the observance of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And what’s even more interesting is that when you trace, and I’m saying when you. I’m referring to the scholarship of people who have looked into this sort of thing. When you trace the development of worship in the Christian church, you find a certain framework almost from the very beginning that has endured in sometimes corrupted form, as in the case of the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church on one end of the spectrum. Charles Roberts (34:22) And then it’s been totally obliterated, as it is in many evangelical mega type churches today, where there’s really no worship to speak of. They call it that, but it doesn’t bear any resemblance whatsoever to the earliest worship of the early church. But going right from the very Beginning of the Church. Up until the modern era, the basic structure of worship was a call to worship, a confession of sin, reading of Scripture, a singing of hymns or psalms, the receiving of the Lord’s Supper, a sermon, a teaching on the Scripture and a benediction and a dismissal. And in one form or another, those things have existed from the very beginning. Now the church I pastor and the denomination that I’m in, and many other Protestant churches and Reformed churches, we regularly confess the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, we even use the Chalcedonian Creed and an Athanasians Creed. Athanasian Creed. Those are not easy to repeat in a worship service. But you know, those are as much a part of our heritage as true Catholic Christians as they are anybody who claims to be Roman Catholic. It’s just a point that the Protestant reformers themselves. You’ve mentioned John Calvin several times. Charles Roberts (35:35) I challenge anyone to get hold of a good English translation of the Institutes of the Christian Religion that you know Calvin’s magisterial work. And you will see footnote after footnote where he refers to the teachings and the writings of the early church fathers, St. Augustine and many others who are sometimes claimed to be the exclusive property of the Roman Catholic Church when they’re nothing at all of the sort. They are the heritage of all true Bible believing Christians. Andrea Schwartz (36:06) So Jesus said, you’ll know they’re Christians by the way they love one another. He also said, said, love me, keep my commandments, he who does the will of my Father. And so there weren’t denominations then, although I imagine just people being people. The Laodiceans might not have liked, the Ephesians who might not have liked, the Galatians who might not have liked, you know, whatever. We don’t have to assume that the early church had no sin. Obviously all have sinned except Christ himself. So the whole idea of acknowledging yourself as a sinner and understanding the principle of Scripture that says you can’t save yourself and no one can save you other than the Holy Spirit is how we should view brothers and sisters in the faith. He didn’t say, you’ll know they’re Christians by their denominations and then listed out all the good ones and all the bad ones. And so those lines of opposition, I’m not saying there aren’t real differences between stated beliefs, but if you’re going to deal with people one on one, and one of the things you see in the early church, it was very local, it wasn’t administered miles and miles and miles away, there might be input, there might be questions like, how do we deal with this? Andrea Schwartz (37:25) But ultimately it involved people interacting with each other, helping and supporting each other. And so I remember one of the criticisms that some of your more established reform people would say against RJ Rushdoony is that he’s just too easy on the Catholics. He’s just too easy on the Catholics. And one person wouldn’t even write a foreword to one of his books that we ended up Publishing after Dr. Rushdoony passed away because he was just too easy on the Catholics. Well, Rushdoony’s theology said, those who are in the family of God are the elective God. And. And this has been established before the foundations of the world and judge them the way we’re supposed to judge in terms of righteous judgments, in terms of how they line up with Scripture. But I even had a conversation with a man on Easter who said, oh, the Catholics, you know, I just. And he just saying Catholic was enough to dismiss someone. And I looked at him and I said, there are true believers in the Catholic Church. And. And if you say they’re not because they’re in the Catholic Church, then you must think that God’s election has to do with someone passing a theology test, as opposed to actually love the Lord, acknowledge their sin, and live with the prompting and obedience to the Holy Spirit. Andrea Schwartz (38:48) So I think we’ve gotten into these factions and. And I think in a lot of ways, Charles, it’s sort of like off the point. Charles Roberts (38:54) Yeah, I used to say that the average evangelical Christian’s understanding of church history went something like this. You had the Jesus and the apostles and the Apostle Paul, and then for maybe over a thousand years, you had not really much of anything. And then you had this guy Martin Luther, and then you had Billy Graham. And that’s their understanding of church history. The fact is, the Protestant Reformation took place in the 1500s. Prior to that time, there was nothing. There was no Protestant Church, there was the Roman Catholic Church. There were heretical sects and groups. It was the Orthodox Church. And so you’ve either got to say that there never were any Christians after the Apostle Paul died until Billy Graham came on the scene, or Martin Luther or Calvin or whoever you say, or you’ve got to account for the fact that the Lord moved through the things that existed at the time and all of their faulty nature to accomplish his will and save his elect people. So, yes, the Lord doesn’t have to go by what we think he should be doing and tell him what to do. On the other hand, he has revealed his perfect, infallible Word in Holy Scripture, and Holy Scripture must be interpreted and understood. Charles Roberts (40:10) And one of the great blessings of the Protestant Reformation is that we have not only the Bible in our own language, but we can read it and understand it for ourselves. But as R.C. sproul once commented, along with that is the responsibility to read it and understand it correctly. And I think this is where the creeds and the confessions of the Church can be a great help. Andrea Schwartz (40:31) And there has to be a basic humility that comes along with if God has opened your eyes to see that certain things are true and other things are not, how you communicate those things is important. And I wouldn’t say how you do it is just as important as the truth itself, but it’s a close second. Because like I said, most people do believe because that’s what they have done and they have believed. So if you’re going to help someone come to an understanding of something, their presuppositions have to change, their ideas have to be altered enough to even understand what you’re saying. And then I believe we’ve done our job and the Holy Spirit does the rest. And I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind. Charles Roberts (41:20) Well, I totally agree, and I will say this much autobiographically, you mentioned this earlier about, you know, you’re being raised a Catholic. Well, I was raised in the Methodist Church. And at some point in my teenage years, it occurred to me that the only reason I was a Methodist is because I was born into a family that that’s where I was baptized in that church and was confirmed in that church. And that to me didn’t seem like an altogether good reason. And so I started exploring and I knew a number of Roman Catholic kids who had left parochial schools to come into the public schools. And that was the conduit for me joining the Roman Catholic Church. But what I found later was that the church I thought I was joining really did not exist. I mean, obviously the parish did and the structure was there. But I think a lot of people, they get a romanticized view of Roman Catholicism that’s based on Hollywood movies like the Shoes of the Fisherman or Becket or Quo Vadis. And, you know, they get all starry eyed with that and think, this is, you know, this is the church I’ve been. Charles Roberts (42:27) This is the church of all ages. But the reality is rather different. And I think maybe to sum all of this up, the death of Pope Francis is an example of that. Where you had a papacy and a pope who espoused on one side certain traditional Catholic doctrines. And on the other, he apparently said it was okay for priests to bless so called same sex marriages. He encouraged any and everybody to get the COVID vaccine, even to the point where there were many Catholics who wanted to take a religious exception where they was mandated. But because of this Pope’s pronouncements, they were in a bind. You know, they said, well, you want to take an exception to getting this vaccine, but your Pope has said you should get it. So he was a real mixed bag, and many of these men who have been in that position have been that way. So I’m certainly not happy that the man died. But on the other hand, I think we should recognize that human beings of all sorts come and go, but the word of God endures forever as we read in the book of Isaiah. Andrea Schwartz (43:32) Okay, so I’m going to share an anecdote and I sort of did this to you as we were doing some preliminary discussions. But back in 1986, 87, there was a movie that came out called Saving Grace. Now, how did I find out about this movie? Quite accidentally, for those of you who remember Blockbuster, when Blockbuster would have sales, they would oftentimes put their VHS tapes at a discount price. And so it was not unusual for my husband and me and sometimes the kids to go in and buy up titles for a dollar. And this looks like a good thing. Anyway, so we watch this movie, Saving Grace, and the premise is that a man is elected Pope. And it starts off seeing how they do their election process. He doesn’t really look like he. He’s very uncomfortable with it, but he says, you know, I accept in the name of the Lord. And then you get to see how the Pope lives and all the pomp and circumstance. And ultimately what happens is he feels very out of touch. When he became a priest, he became a priest because he enjoyed working with people, helping people, administering God’s love through his acts of service. Andrea Schwartz (44:52) And so he’s going through a crisis. Like, I’m just like this figurehead. What does it matter? Anyway, as the story goes, one day he’s out gardening in the Vatican and a piece of paper starts to blow away. And he tries to go get it. And he opens the door and he gets there, but the door closes and now he’s locked out of the Vatican property. And he sort of enjoys it because he’s going around the. I guess the Italian soccer team had just won the World cup, and he’s out among people, and he really likes the freedom of it. Anyway, previously there had been a young girl who had come to the Vatican to say, our village doesn’t have a priest. And so he uses this as an opportunity to go to that village, and he sees a devastated people who are hopeless, who are just basically, they have no hope. Anyway, so we watched the movie and we liked it, and I went and brought it up, and I sat down with Dr. Rushdoony, and we watched it together. I cannot tell you how. I mean, I never. I’d never really gone to the movies with Rush, so I can’t really say how he normally reacted, but as the story progresses, he was, like, clapping his hands, going, this is Christian reconstruction. Andrea Schwartz (46:09) This is Christian reconstruction. And I would encourage people, you can watch the movie for free on YouTube. It used to not be available on a service, but I rewatched it yesterday on YouTube so you can see it. But it had nothing to do with Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is Christian reconstruction. It’s what a believer does in terms of putting faith into action. And I think you’ll end up smiling. And for those who don’t know a lot about Roman Catholicism, you’ll get a dose of it, because you’ll see at the beginning of the film what the whole pomp and circumstance looks like. And it ends with him giving an Easter address to the crowd because he’s back now being the Pope. And of course, we just had the Pope that died on Monday give his papal address. So I think it’s a timely thing to watch. Charles Roberts (47:00) But. Andrea Schwartz (47:00) But the important part is, what is Christian reconstruction? It’s building the kingdom. And you actually see this depicted in the movie, not just building, but how you deal with the enemies of God in the process of them trying to destroy your work. So I highly recommend the movie. It’s really. It remains one of my favorites ever. And maybe that was because I got a chance to watch it with Rush, but he then asked me at the time, can you buy copies of this? And I think to get a copy of VHS cost like 20 to $50. I don’t remember at the time, but I sent him a couple, and he passed it around to the staff. He said, they need to see this. So I think that we do need to separate sometimes form from content, that the most important aspect of our faith is content. And sometimes it’s going to come in different forms. And I think especially you, Charles, who, in your journey, I think, did the smorgasbord of trying almost everything to. In your search for truth, but that you’re going to find some aspects of truth along the way. But of course, Jesus is the capital t Truth. Charles Roberts (48:11) Yeah. And I did see the movie at your recommendation, and I did see it on YouTube. And you know, what I took away from it, apart from the things that you’ve already mentioned, is that you have here an individual, regardless of who he is, who is attempting to either consciously or unconsciously live out the teachings of Jesus, that by this they will know you’re my disciple if you have love for one another. Well, what does that look like? It’s not just having, you know, warm, fuzzy feelings about somebody. It means putting your shoulder to the wheel and getting to work to help people who need help. In this case, it was, like you said, a village that they needed water and a few other, you know, essentials. So, yeah, I can see why Dr. Rashtuni was so excited about it from that standpoint. And yeah, if we’re going to follow Jesus teachings, then that looks like something. It’s not. Just something that feels a certain way. Andrea Schwartz (48:58) And when you are obedient to scripture, guess who will recognize it? The people God has called will gravitate towards what you’re doing and your endeavor. And the people who hate God will also notice you. And I think that was very clear depicted in the movie. In terms of movies, let me say I also watched recently the latest movie on bishops and cardinals and the papacy called Conclave, and I don’t recommend it because it’s pretty obvious that the movie has a point. I. I think maybe they knew that this pope was either ill or something like that. But within it you get to see even the various factions within this homogenous group, which isn’t all that homogenous, those who want to promulgate sexual preferences and things of that nature. So I Saving Grace is a much better movie to watch, but you can see on the flip side how it’s divorced from serving people. And it’s much more in the movie, the more recent one, on pushing an agenda. And it, if you, you know, make it through the movie, it’s not God’s agenda. Charles Roberts (50:13) Well, Andrea, I think we’ve plumb the depths of these issues. And again, I mean, to some extent it is a big occasion when a pope dies and a new one is being elected, if for no other reason. It’s all over the news and that kind of thing. But I hope our listeners have gained something from this discussion. And I think you’ll agree we would love to hear from folks who may want to comment or make suggestions for other topics. Would you share the email address they can use for that? Andrea Schwartz (50:41) OutofthequestionPodcast@gmail.com. that’s how you reach us. And as far as the book that a particular person did not want to write an introduction for, it’s called the Cure of Souls, and it’s about this is by Rushdoony, and it’s about confession and what it actually means. And I think that’s a very useful understanding of confession, the faith and the need for confession, and divorce it from the standard idea of the Catholic confessional and things of that nature. But it’s a very potent book and it really talks about the basis of our faith. So I would recommend that one. Charles Roberts (51:25) And I think we’re in the midst of a spring sale or something like that, the Chalcedon.edu website, so it’s a good time for people to avail themselves of that. Very excellent title. Thank you for mentioning the title, because I was going to ask you what that was. Andrea Schwartz (51:38) Yes, very good. All right, folks, thanks for joining us and we’ll talk with you next time. Thanks for listening to out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu…

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334: Are You a Peacemaker or Just Picking Sides? 48:53

16 days ago48:53

48:53

This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . Andrea Schwartz (00:01) 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 co-hosts are Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor, and Pastor Charles Roberts. Charles Roberts (00:19) Matthew 5: 9 reads, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. ‘ As much as the 1960s promoted the idea of peace, and subsequently we hear the phrase peace out much, any examination of legacy or social media will confirm there is little to no peace prevailing in America today. I believe it boils down to everyone considering his or her opinion as valid and correct, but often have little to no idea from where they derive their opinions. More often than not, people filter what they read or see within the context of their own already established opinions. But as R. J. Rushdoony noted, without the God of scripture, we have the collapse of all values into totally subjective opinions. Now, Charles, if we examine the latest news story, whether it’s about tariffs, elections, violence, or crime, rarely is there opportunity to get objective reporting. Moreover, there is a decided effort to create provocative headlines to appeal to those with predetermined opinions within their presupposed conclusions. This often widens the gap between those of opposing sides and provides no clarity, and definitely not peace. Charles, do you consider that most people derive their values from subjective opinions, as Rajduni noted? Charles Roberts (02:03) And do you think they even know how they’ve arrived at their opinions? Andrea Schwartz (02:08) Yes and no. Yes to your answer, the first part, and no to the second. I heard someone put it this way some years ago on a podcast, and I wish there’s no way I could go back and find it from the person who said it. But they talked about the fact that everyone’s awareness or consciousness or thoughts are plugged in with an imaginary cable connected to whatever the source of their information is, and that’s how they think. In other words, it’s this collective thinking about things that is molded and shaped by the information that people are fed. I mean, by choice. I mean, people can decide what news broadcast they’re going to watch or podcast they’re going to listen to. I sometimes get in discussions with folks, whether it be theological, the church world or outside or wherever, and especially with Christians, I have to stop and say, not always out loud, you’re channeling Fox News right now. I want to know what you think the Bible says about this, that, or the other, or you’re channeling CNN or whatever it may be. And I think that’s a good way to put it. That’s what most people, whether they are aware of it or not, and I think many of them aren’t, they’re channeling, they’re chirping whatever it is that they’ve heard over and over and over again in the popular news media. Charles Roberts (03:26) And what’s interesting is it’s very easy for us to assume that because we live in the 21st century, we are so much more enlightened than other people. But if you think about it, even the whole idea of, I really wonder about this, I think I’ll Google it. Well, I have a friend who works in marketing who said, Where do businesses go to die? And the answer was the second page of Google search results. And so he pointed out, and I’m sure people know this, that sometimes you can pay people to make sure that you get on the first page. And so what we have is very curated information, not only in internet searches, but in TV, podcasts, as you say. I mean, there are going to be points of view that people will share with others. If you go back 250 years, how did people know anything if they didn’t have all this technology to help them? Andrea Schwartz (04:29) Well, I think it gets back to what I was saying a moment ago and quoting this person who was pointing out how the collective consciousness of a culture or society is formed by the things that they’re constantly feeding themselves. Well, in older times, before the advent of what we call technology or mass media, that same consciousness was there, but it was being informed by a collective Christian culture that was also, even more importantly, informed by the teachings of God’s law word. You’ve heard it said many times We’ve talked about it, when you were younger, people of our age or older, you could leave your house and leave your door unlocked because nobody would come in and steal anything. And that was largely the case because everybody was operating, more or less from the standpoint of, you must not steal. So regardless of the church, regardless of the Bible translation, most people operated from the standpoint of a, nominally, at least biblical worldview. And so So that’s how their ideas and impressions were formed. But now that doesn’t mean it was pervasive. It wasn’t the Kingdom of God on Earth type of thing. It’s interesting we talk about this, the influence of media. Andrea Schwartz (05:44) In one of Dr. Rastuni’s essays, the title of which is, let’s see, Sex and Culture. This was published in the Calcedon Report in 1971. The thing I’m going to share here has nothing to do with the topic. And in a direct way, but he’s quoting another author, whose last name is Unwin, U-N-W-I-N, who wrote this in 1940, talking about the press. Now, people don’t. Today, I doubt you say to somebody who’s 17 or 18 year old, what do you think about the press? They probably won’t have any idea what you’re talking about nowadays. But of course, it means back then, and to some extent today, it means the newspapers, the printed media, which was largely what people had. But this author says, and Rostuni is quoting him, The press dictates, suggests suggests insinuates. A collection of highly selected data masquerades as news, giving a false impression of events. There is little real mental activity, although there is a great deal of talk. And it goes on from there. But that was not written two weeks ago. That was written almost, what, 75 years ago. Charles Roberts (06:49) So technology can get some of the credit for this. But let’s go back before there was widespread technology. People correctly understood that education and the books that people read were going to shape their view. And so if the books were coming from a Christian orientation, however, whether or not it was actually by born-again believers, there was a framework. And as time has gone on, especially in schools and textbooks, which basically are editors deciding what students need to know, there’s been this elevation of science of secularism so that people just say, Well, this is what I learned in school. These are the things that I remember since kindergarten. In which case, they’re not even questioning their presuppositions because they have confused what they suppose is true with something called brute facts. Now, what are brute facts? Andrea Schwartz (07:56) Well, that’s the idea that there’s just this objective reality that everything comes into the world, whether it be a human being or the physical world, and it’s just there. It’s not left or right, up or down, black or white. It’s just simply there. It’s just a reality. And whatever meaning the facts may have, whether it’s the tree in my backyard or the development of human culture or technology or politics, whatever the meaning is, it has to be invested with meaning by me because in and of itself, it It’s just simply there as a fact of information until I decide to do something with it. Charles Roberts (08:35) So it was Cornelius Van Tille. He promoted this idea of brute factuality as being not even true, that there are no such things as brute facts. As a result, that means that something actually has meaning, but you need a standard or a context of that meaning. That’s where the biblical worldview view comes into play. For example, if we’re going to talk about the American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, there are things that we can say, On this date this happened. However, Saying that doesn’t tell us why it happened, whether it was right or wrong. The same thing with the crusades. Depending on who you speak with, someone would look at the crusades as a positive thing. Other people might say it was a negative thing, and other people, maybe it hasn’t been taught and they’re not exposed to it, so they have no opinion on it, as opposed to, is there a way to view it in terms of what God’s word says? Andrea Schwartz (09:43) And I’m glad you mentioned Dr. Van Tille, because one of the, even to this day, points of division among reformed people and Christians, generally, or evangelical-type Christians, and the issue of apologetics of the defense of the faith is what’s called classical or evidential apologetics, which more or less starts from the standpoint of, is that, yeah, there are some brute facts. And look, if I can just present enough evidence to you, then if you’re going to be logical, if you’re going to be rational and intelligent, then you’ve got to admit that the evidence is there’s a God, or this was created by God. At the other end, where I think you and I and the Calcedon Foundation stand, and much of those who embrace reformed theology, the presupposition traditional position of Van Tille, Gordon Clarke, and a few others, which says, there are no brute facts. There’s no neutral territory, and there’s no point in you and I coming together to try to reason things together so I might present enough evidence to you. And part of this, and this is where I would be critical of the former view, the evidentialist view, is it’s a holdover from Greek philosophy. Andrea Schwartz (10:54) And really, philosophy, as we know it today as an academic study in colleges and the writings of intellectuals for centuries, is directly rooted in a Greek worldview, a pagan worldview that says there is nothing but brute factuality. And Aristotle says this, Plato says that, Parmenides says this, and I have to decide which one is the most intelligent and the most reasonable. But if you’re going to start with that point of view, it makes sense to go that way. But if you are claiming to be biblical, if you’re claiming to be Christian, no. Everything has already been determined by a sovereign Creator God. And so that’s where you start. This is where scripture starts. And the best thing that we can do is simply start in the same place and point out to people who think that there are brute facts. And look, listeners, this is directly connected to the subject of the media that we’re talking about today, because that’s the way they operate, is to say, if you are going to work anywhere near intelligently in this world, Then you must do so according to what God says. You must, as Vantil said in Rushdoony, after him, we must think God’s thoughts after him. Andrea Schwartz (12:09) And that’s unavoidable. You’re going to be thinking somebody’s thoughts after them without fail. The question is, is it going to be God Almighty in what he says in his word? Is it going to be Karl Marx? Is it going to be Oprah Winfrey or whoever? That’s the choice that lies before a person. And there’s only really two choices, either God’s word or man’s word. Charles Roberts (12:30) And so we’re called to be pacemakers. Micah 6: 8 also says that in the context of being obedient to God, we’re to do justice, we’re to love mercy, and we’re to walk humbly. I believe that The current status quo makes those things difficult in anything other than a face-to-face interaction with people or a interaction that isn’t an in-your face interaction. Now, I don’t know about you, Charles, and I know that I’m susceptible to this. I’ll see a post on social media and there’ll be a picture of someone who, by and large, I would agree with. I automatically give that person the benefit of the doubt because you see, I already know I agree with that person. Similarly speaking, if I see a picture of someone who I know I don’t agree with, well, then whatever is being presented, I’m quick to say, Well, that can’t true. So I might either skip over it or just watch it to confirm the idea that this person isn’t very smart or this person is evil, et cetera. And so when we fail to realize that our interactions with people are meant to bring about their reconciliation with God, helping them see that they need reconciliation, the current format actually works against that rather than contributing to some common ground meeting of the minds. Andrea Schwartz (14:07) Yeah, I’m glad you quoted the passage concerning peacemakers. And of course, Jesus says the same thing in the Beatitudes. And in my sermon, actually, from this past Sunday, we discussed that, and I contrasted it with the famous saying of a Roman general, in Latin, which means if you want peace, prepare for war. Now, I guess from a military standpoint, that makes some sense. But I think the exhortation of our Lord and of scripture is that if you want peace, you prepare for peace. And the way that you do that is by understanding that you are either in a place of being under God’s wrath and curse, which is due to you for your sins, or you have been transferred, moved out of that position into a place of grace and mercy, which is all his doing, his work of redeeming you and saving your soul. In the larger picture of what we are talking about, modern media, modern technology, operates completely from the standpoint of if there’s a God, he really doesn’t have that much to say about anything. And so man’s word, the word of the media and the people who run it, that paints the true reality. Andrea Schwartz (15:24) And you can, again, it comes down to you can decide for yourself, like you said, with the picture of the person you knew you agreed with ahead of That’s the way we continue to be molded and manipulated by images and thoughts. So to some extent, I get that. I don’t see it too much anymore, but there used to be these TV commercials with a famous baseball player for the New York Yankees. The guy was a great baseball player, but he’s promoting men’s cologne or something like that. He doesn’t know any more about men’s cologne than I do. Just because he plays baseball well, it doesn’t mean that he’s an authority on cologne. Charles Roberts (16:00) And again, you got to go back to our theology. In other words, we don’t have to create a war. Bible tells us that there’s been a war from the outset, the war between two seeds, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And we don’t have to go around condemning people because those outside of Christ are already condemned. So I think oftentimes we lose sight of what we’re supposed to do and what we’re supposed to think when we encounter someone with different ideas. Just because someone doesn’t think the same way I do, doesn’t make him evil. It doesn’t make him not evil, but this shouldn’t be the first assumption. I have an opinion. I have a point of view, as soon as I hear somebody else even indicating that he’s going in a different direction, I’ve got to get my shields up to make sure I don’t get penetrated. Well, the problem with that is that depending on when you first hear about something. George Floyd incident back in 2020 is a great example. Most people, when they saw the video, came to the conclusion that the narrative was true. These policemen killed an innocent black man. Charles Roberts (17:17) Now, regardless of what you think about the people involved, how much were we all influenced by the first report or the first visual? And then all the commentary Story, which really amounts to various people’s opinions, and some opinions get wider play than others because they’re funded, that why can’t we just say, I don’t know enough about this to be able to make a decision, as opposed to, you’ve got to immediately get on a side. Recently, I’m sure most people will know the story about two teens that attract meat, and one stabbed another, and the he died. There are all sorts of opinions, some true, some based on true facts, some not, some made up whole cloth. Why aren’t we comfortable to say, I don’t see evidence here. I’m not asked to adjudicate this, but at least say, I can go to a higher principle and talk about it in terms of scripture. But I think we all want to be that authoritative person who calls up on talk radio says, I think this. I often comment like, Who cares what this person I don’t know thinks? He’s not justifying where he gets his information. Opinions actually end up making it harder for us to pursue the Great Commission. Andrea Schwartz (18:50) Yeah, and I think that’s an intentional effort on the part of at least some media, maybe a majority of it, is to create division, to create conflict and tension in society, because that’s what by our fallen human nature, we tend to gravitate that thing. I don’t know how it is out there where you live in California and your local TV channel. And I don’t mean Los Angeles or one of the bigger cities, San Francisco, but I guess you have local TV that doesn’t include those. Maybe not. I don’t know. But here, where I live, it’s a city and county of 300,000 people. I I don’t know. But it’s just nonstop car wrecks, killings, murders. It’s just nothing but bad news. It’s astounding to sit and watch this stuff without any real context. And it’s just like And if there’s not enough bad stuff that’s happened here locally, well, then they’ll go to the state up next to us and say, Well, in Georgia, this happened today, or North Carolina, this happened today. And it’s all the bad stuff. And that’s, again, that’s not an accident. You have to ask yourself, why is this is why I’m being told this material, this information, as opposed to… Andrea Schwartz (20:06) Well, it reminds me of something I saw a long, long time ago when I was in school. There used to be this thing called My Weekly Reader. And it had all kinds of little puzzles and little tidbits of information for elementary school kids. And then you had this yellow journalism stuff with the, I think it was called the National Enquirer. At least at that time, it was all horrible stories, a printed version of the media’s train wrecks and car accidents and people getting killed, and sometimes with very graphic pictures. And they would have it at the newspaper, excuse me, at the grocery store checkout place. Well, I think it was I forgot which one of the parody magazines it was, but they did a takeoff on My Weekly Reader in comparison to one of these yellow journalism type things. And it was meant to be sarcastic. So one headline was, Death Told Zero as train pulls safely into Station. And that got the point across, I think. I’ve never forgotten that. It made such an impression. So I think that people need to realize that what you’re being fed or exposed to by the media is not just haphazard. Andrea Schwartz (21:21) It’s not brute facts. It’s managed information that is put to you for a particular purpose, and it’ll legislate a particular agenda. Not necessarily political in that sense, but it definitely has theological implications. Charles Roberts (21:35) And without always recognizing it, people get molded. I don’t really remember prior to the whole COVID deal that when you said goodbye to someone, you said, Stay safe. Yeah. That was something that would basically imply that the lack of safety is all around you, so you need to stay safe. And so when we don’t question those things and we just respond, well, then you have a very fearful society. And instead of looking at, I have a lot of common ground with these people in my neighborhood, in my city, right? Instead, they become potential threats. And I saw this played out in churches that were open during COVID, who a lot of the people were just firmly saying that we have a right to be here without masks on, 6 feet doesn’t matter. Then the vaccine was rolled out, and now it became apparent that there was this thing called shedding. Well, the very same people, Charles, who did not feel that it was righteous to be segregated or told what to do, were asking for people who had been vaccinated to sit at a particular portion of the church. And I remember watching people and hearing them and saying, Do you realize that you’re doing the very thing that you said you were against? Charles Roberts (23:04) And I think it’s time for everybody to take a pause and say, number one, why do I think what I think? Number two, why does the other person think opposite? If you don’t ask those questions, then you’re not really interested in a meeting of the minds. You’re more interested in being right. Andrea Schwartz (23:26) One of the things that has come to light in this past last year, although this information has been readily available for people who have had an interest in going beyond the surface information provided to us in educational institutions and the mass media, is the fact that in the case of mass media, one of the things that we’ve learned because of Freedom of Information Act material, and the fact that it’s a lot more open discussion about this thing, is that going back 50, 70 years, there have been what are typically called the alphabet agencies of big government, have been involved in planting newspaper stories and making sure that a certain perspective on things is presented to the public. And it’s been done for reasons that are not always in the public’s best interest. I was astounded to know that when the Watergate scandal was exposed back in the 1970s, I think it was Woodward, the Woodward and Bernstein pair who exposed the story. This guy came from naval intelligence. He had no background whatsoever in newspaper journalism, but he just walks in and he’s handed this story. He’s the guy, along with this other fellow, who manipulated and massage the Watergate story to what people know about it today that was largely shaped by that perspective, when in fact, now it’s coming out. Andrea Schwartz (24:56) There’s a lot of stuff about that incident in particular that is has been largely unknown and definitely unreported, and it’s not at all what people were led to believe it was. And you can talk about the same thing with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, all the things that have been happening. And let’s take 9/11. I’m not going to go down that path too much, but I just want to say, if people remember, right after 9/11, it went on for months and months and months, those planes flying into the World Trade Center over and over and over again. We were exposed to this. Why? How many times do you need to see before you get the idea of what happened. Now, here where I live, we had a horrible hurricane several months ago, Hurricane Helene, and we still see this now. Now, still, communities have not completely recovered. It was a devastating event. But the news media here just constantly show uprooted trees, and then then out there where you live, you’ve got fires. They love to do this thing because it shapes our opinions and our thoughts about the world around us. Charles Roberts (25:59) And so as As a result, what’s being played upon is a conflict of interest. We’ve talked about before, the Bible posits a harmony of interest, that in order for me to benefit, you don’t have to lose. But that’s not the current thing. I have seen people parading what has been promoted as the necessity, for example, for a voter ID, that if you’re going to vote, you should be able to say, This This is who I am and this is where I live. Now, some people think that’s wonderful. Other people think it’s awful. Yet, you and I remember, and most people today, if you wanted to go and buy alcohol, you had to show your ID. It used It would be that if you were going to use a credit card, you had to show your ID. Well, in order to make it a big deal, you have people now saying that poor people, and they will often say black people, can’t get an ID. Well, Charles, have you ever run into someone who was lamenting to you that they couldn’t get an ID? I never have. Andrea Schwartz (27:10) No, I haven’t either. Charles Roberts (27:11) Now, the next thing that’s being promoted is that married women will not be allowed to vote. When I hear this, I’m like, That’s crazy. Everybody will know it. But then people that I know are promoting the fact we’ve got to be against vote or ID because married women will not be able to vote. Well, I’ve been a married woman for almost 50 years, and I’ve never had an issue. So create an issue in such a way that when you don’t want something to be the way you don’t want it to be, you’re going to have to make up all sorts of things. And I think we all fall prey to knee-jerk reactions. So the good question to ask is, exactly why Why is it difficult to get ID? Or why will suddenly married women not be able to get identification? Instead of just labeling someone a liberal or a conservative or has this syndrome or whatever you want to say, if we actually treat people as image bearers of God, who’ve been given minds, who’ve been given senses, if we really do want to see that they become disciples, then our approach shouldn’t be, Hi, I’m smart. Charles Roberts (28:38) You’re stupid. Let’s talk. I don’t know about you, but that wouldn’t be a way in which I would receive an invitation for communication. Andrea Schwartz (28:46) No, that’s pretty much guaranteed to fall flat from the very beginning. Some of the things we were saying earlier about the way media manipulates or manages as our awareness or thinking about things. We had a recent discussion on this podcast about artificial intelligence, AI, and you really can see this there. I mean, I guess it’s no different than looking in one type of encyclopedia or a dictionary or whatever than another or website or other. But just out of curiosity, I did an AI research thing where I just typed in the name of R. J. Rushdoony, and two or three of these different AI platforms, of the more popular ones and more powerful ones. Anybody can do this free of charge. You can use these things. And it was amazing the vast difference in the statements and things that were said about who R. J. Rushdoony was. And that’s a typical example. If somebody who really doesn’t know, maybe they heard this man’s name, and you can plug in, Gavin Newsom, Donald Trump, whatever you want, they’ve got to make a decision. Do I go with that particular AI? Do I go with this one? Do I go with the New York Times or the The Chronicle or the Bee or whatever it is. Andrea Schwartz (30:03) And the average person is left at a disadvantage. And what we are talking about is the type of society and human interaction that can and will one day exist when God’s law word is the thing that informs everyone’s thinking, and they are motivated by God’s spirit to obey that law word because there is nothing better and because this is what God’s divine truth says. This is how you prosper. This is how you have justice. This is how you pursue truth and peace between people. Charles Roberts (30:38) Funny, you talk about AI and ChatGPT. I think it was a couple of years ago when it first came out, I have a grandson who is very much into computers and everything else. We were having a discussion, and he was trying to tell me that it was accurate, and I was saying, I don’t think so. So I asked him to put my name in. So he put my name in. I was attributed as the author for a whole series of books that I was familiar with, mind you, but I did not write. These books predated my conversion to Christianity. I said, I didn’t write those books. And my grandson looked at me and said, Are you sure? I said, I’m very sure. I’ve written books, but I haven’t written those books. And then he said, Well, it’s a new technology. It’s still being developed. I said, Okay, What do you see here? I am telling you, and even then, he doubted me because the result, it made me a very prolific author. I’ve written eight books, but I hadn’t written these big volumes on American history or things of that nature. So it goes back to, do I want to have knowledge? Charles Roberts (31:53) Do I want to have wisdom? Do I want to have understanding? Which the Bible puts a very high premium on. Or do I want to be able to just have a retort? Or, as most social media is, do I just want to do a monolog? I think social media posts often are monologs. And then the comment section is supposed to promote dialog, but it promotes rancor and people saying very nasty things that they would never say, hopefully, face to face. I think we got to go back to where I started. What What does the Bible say about opinions? There’s an expression, Opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has one. Okay? What do you think or where do you think the Bible plays Jesus’ opinion in terms of honoring God? Andrea Schwartz (32:50) Well, I haven’t done a concordance search for the word opinion. The passage, Come, let us reason together. But the whole point of that End of statement is, let’s realize together what God’s truth is and what he tells us we need to be thinking about things. I would challenge our listeners to think about it this way. Let’s say someone is transported from someplace unknown. They’ve never been on the Earth, and they all of a sudden materialize in the middle of, I don’t know, Zion National Park in Utah. And they look around, and the first question I think that any intelligent person would ask, if they never seen something like this, is, where did this come from? How did this get here? What is the origin of this? And depending on if they’re thinking in their own minds, how do I find this out? Well, the next move they make, intellectually and morally, is going to determine everything about how they view reality. Charles Roberts (33:58) That’s so true. That it really is true, because where do you go to get an answer? And do you always evaluate that source? Andrea Schwartz (34:09) Right. I mean, the operating assumption is, and I think this is the way most people think this is the way the government schools operate, the media operates, is, well, in order for us to know and understand anything, well, we start with science, we start with technology, we start with philosophy. In other words, we start with man’s mind. That’s the starting point. But the biblical perspective, as I said at the moment ago, we start with what God says first, and then we move from there. And we can certainly form opinions about what God’s word teaches us. Certainly, we see this in the Christian world and theological perspectives, the different takes on, even within the larger framework of Dr. Rastuni’s teachings. There are people who have one view, people have another. But that’s a little bit different than saying, okay, well, let’s consider what humanistic science says, and then we’ll take into account what the Bible says, or let’s take the Bible what it says, and then let’s think about humanistic science. Charles Roberts (35:06) Right. I’m still stuck on this. Does the Bible speak about opinions? I think the Bible, especially in the Book of Proverbs, talks about conclusions based on certain things. If we’re going to say, I have a conclusion about something, therefore this is my opinion, but an opinion that doesn’t get backed up by something real. A good example would be, take any number of history books. I said the crusades. We can use the crusades. What do you know about the crusades? Well, really, before you get into that examination for the answer is who wrote the book? Who exactly is giving this explanation? I think that’s why true education means examining a lot of different sources. Those who think that in, for example, the war between the States, that the North was wrong, okay, how did you come up with that conclusion? Somebody who thinks the South was right, how did you come up with that conclusion? But I don’t think most people are that patient today. I think they just want an answer. They want to have an opinion. So what’s your opinion on this? Well, I guess I have to have an opinion as opposed to, I don’t know enough about this to have an opinion. Andrea Schwartz (36:29) And I I think that’s been one of the downsides or unfortunate side effects of social media is that it gives people a platform to express uninformed opinions or maybe well of formed opinions. But especially in the former category, everyone becomes a walking authority on everything. And you see this in comments about various things, and it really leads to conflict and tension. And that people feel empowered because nobody can see them. You don’t really physically have to interact with the person you’re getting ready to insult by saying you’re stupid, it’s this way or that way. Then you have people who otherwise… I mean, let’s say, for example, you were having a conversation in a mall or in some public place with someone you know casually, and somebody who you don’t know simply walks by and having overheard part of what you said, they just walk up and say some smart, insulting thing to either one or both of you. Well, This is what happens on social media frequently. If you’re in a part of a group, a public group on Facebook or one of the social media platforms, I don’t know. Let’s say it’s dedicated to the subject of cooking, how to make good pasta, pasta meals. Andrea Schwartz (37:48) And people are commenting about that. You’ll have somebody will pose something that is totally unrelated to it. It’s just some wise crack. And see, these are the things that in normal human interaction interaction, it used to be normal, people just didn’t do that because they realized it would be insulting and they would be ostracized for having behaved that way to some extent. Charles Roberts (38:10) You even see it with interactions with people now. You could be talking to someone, somebody else comes in and starts talking and the person turns away and goes and listens to the other person, you’re like, What is this? Well, real life has now started to mimic these kinds of posts and comments, et cetera. But let me give you an of what I was talking about in terms of where opinions come from. A number of years ago, I was going to an event, and if I’m not mistaken, the event was of a social-political nature in terms of… Because COVID had just happened and there were restrictions, et cetera. I was standing in line between two women. Now, I happened to know who these women were, but I don’t think they knew who I was. One was the head of the Republican women’s organization locally, and another one was President of a Liberty Foundation. These two are talking. They’re talking about two people, one who was an ambassador from the US who was homosexual, and another one was a news commentator on conservative shows. Both of these men were homosexual. I was listening to them talk about how intelligent these men were, how right they were. Charles Roberts (39:31) They were turning around. They weren’t excluding me from the conversation, but I assumed that both these women were Christian because this event was held at a church. I said, Doesn’t it bother you that both their public lifestyles promote the fact that’s something that’s at war with God? Both of them were taken aback. One said, I just wish he wasn’t a homosexual because I’d certainly like to date him. All of a sudden, I was thinking, these are people who are spearheading organizations, conservative organizations. Let’s get on the right side of American history, blah, blah, blah. Their opinion was based on that both these men were objectively good-looking and objectively well-spoken, but it didn’t seem to bother either one of them. I mean, they thought it was like, it really would be better if he wasn’t. But it wasn’t enough to say, are my opinions being filtered through my own presuppositions? That if I have a grand scale of things, conservativism is much more important than down the way would be sexual orientation because I don’t really care. Well, the Bible tells us we should care about things and we don’t have our priorities in order, then we’re going to be a defensive society because we’re going to defend these ideas ideas, our opinions, that really shouldn’t be as high up as we make them. Andrea Schwartz (41:05) Many years ago, after Francis Schafer had written, How Should We Then Live, his son, Franky, made a video series based on that book, and one of the more interesting and arresting segments of the video series, and Schafer talked about this in the book, is the way modern media influence thinking. Well, when he wrote this back in the in the video adaptation of the book, he used a picture of some people who were having a demonstration with signs on sticks and things like that, like we see even today. And he showed how, depending on how it was photographed and filmed, you would be given one impression. And then, of course, the commentary that went along with it, that also influenced how you thought about these protesters or this demonstration. And the two were entirely different. And somebody who didn’t realize one way or the other could come away influenced to think, these are a bunch of bums, or these people are right. They’re right to get out there and protest. But it was all manipulated to bring about a certain opinion about things. So I think that we need to challenge our listeners and ourselves to be constantly aware that no information comes to us in mass media that is not managed to produce a certain way of thinking in a certain perspective. Charles Roberts (42:31) And that’s why a biblical world and life view will be your filter, your eyeglasses on how to interpret things. Now, there may be those who say, Well, I don’t consider the Bible authoritative. I think that’s a faulty way to live. Okay, they’re entitled to their opinion, but they don’t have anything similar to replace it with except their own determination. And anybody who’s going to be honest knows that none of know everything. And that’s the whole point of submitting to the Triune God, because the Triune God not only knows everything, he created everything, and things are going to be right or wrong depending on how they measure up to what he said. So going back to the idea of being a pacemaker means that when you encounter people, don’t assume that you have to show them how right you are. Maybe spend a little bit more time listening to what someone says. And if you really want to invest in that person, because not all relationships can be invested the same way, that as you find an area where you can say, Okay, we do agree on this. It’s not safe to walk out at night, or we can agree on this. Charles Roberts (43:51) There’s a lot of junk in our foods, or we can agree on this. There is a problem with our election system. Then work off what you both can agree upon, and then you get to insert, Well, this is what the Bible says. You don’t have to say, Now, I really want you to believe the Bible. Say it as a fact. If you believe that what the Bible says is what the Bible says, then you just share, This is what the Bible says. What that person does with it is not your responsibility. We’re to endeavor to communicate the truth, and as a result, if the Holy spirit is present in that person’s in his life than a disciple is made. Andrea Schwartz (44:33) Yes, and I think just as important is the fact that in Jesus’ statement, blessed are the peacemakers, he indicates that for those who follow that path, they have a special designation. They will be called God’s sons or the children of God. And children reflect their parents. And this is what we are supposed to do in our interaction with others. It’s not always easy, but if we are to truly reflect God’s law word, this is what our calling is. And now, it’ll be careful to say, he doesn’t say, blessed are those who appease others, those who enable others. There is a biblical perspective on what peace-making is to look like and what it is versus a humanistic view. But the whole purpose of it is to create dynamic, loving relationships between people who are covenant believers. So So that those outside the covenant will be envious and realize that they follow a lifestyle that is filled with misery and death. And that is not God’s plan for his people. Charles Roberts (45:40) Exactly. And I’m glad you pointed out it doesn’t mean blessed are the appeasers, because we never give up the fact that there is truth with a capital T. Jesus Christ calls himself the truth. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. But it doesn’t mean that in order to communicate that, you have to take out a machine gun and basically get everybody collapsed back, and now they’re going to listen to you. You have to believe that if you’re talking to someone who God has ordained as his elect before the foundations of the world, we get the privilege of being the agency by which the Holy spirit communicates to these folks externally, and then our prayer would be internally. So instead of looking at it that we’ve got to fight, which is what most of media is encouraging people to fight, stand up for. If you really look at the scripture the way it promotes itself both, Charles, and I know you know this, the victory is won. It’s not like if we do it right or we do it wrong, it’s going to change the outcome. Andrea Schwartz (46:56) That’s correct. And I think we should, in wrapping things up, challenge our listeners to take seriously what the Lord says about being pacemakers, and also seriously realize that with the best of intentions, we can find ourselves being manipulated to go against that teaching of God’s word, and find ourselves constantly parabelem, preparing for war. Charles Roberts (47:23) All right. Any reading suggestions for our listeners, Charles? Andrea Schwartz (47:28) Well, the passage I As I noted earlier, where Rushdoony was quoting this author, Unwin, is from the series Faith and Action, the multivolume series of the articles by Dr. Rushdoony from the Chalcedon Report. And whether we’re talking about that or anything else, that is an excellent set of books to have in your library and read them. Charles Roberts (47:48) I would add, and this is one that really was a pivotal book of Rushdoony’s Institute certainly was, but this comes a close second, and that’s REVOLT Against Maturity. It goes into the psychology that would be considered a biblical psychology as opposed to a humanistic psychology. That book really brings out the idea that the enemy of God wants people to be fighting, where that’s not God’s intent. The Bible recognizes there’s a war, but it recognizes the source of that war and also clearly promotes the victory. Out of the Question podcast at gmail. Com is how you reach us. Charles, talk to you next time. Andrea Schwartz (48:40) Okay. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.…

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333: Is Pornography Ravaging Churches? 44:20

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This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . Charles Roberts (00:01) 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 co-hosts are Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor, and Pastor Charles Roberts. Andrea Schwartz (00:19) Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Out of the Question podcast. Theology and theological doctrines are not things reserved for intellectuals or professional clergymen. For the laity not to understand from the bottom up the principles of the Christian biblical faith leaves them susceptible to humanism and all its counterfeits. In fact, the very counterfeits of humanism are distortions of genuine biblical truths and have resulted in those who profess Christ to often become delinquent confessing him. In other words, one can say he believes certain things, but his actions betray his words. Nowadays, Christians are very eager to share the gospel with their unbelieving family and friends. But what they share often misses the objective realities of mankind’s condition. Succinctly stated, God created Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth according to his law. Eden was a pilot project, if you will, where they would gain experience in faithful work, which would then extend to the entire earth. When they sinned, they lost the privilege given them without losing God’s demands on their lives. Sin was now central to their thoughts, words, and deeds, and it was imputed or transferred, if you would, to all their posterity. Andrea Schwartz (02:01) Now, what I have just done is state facts. There is never any reason for Christians to debate these facts as they have been clearly revealed in scripture, which is inerrant and infallible. Thus, the first thing that needs to be communicated to those whom believers wish to reach is the fact of this imputation of sin, the bad news, if you will. But following this information should be that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ for the express purpose of receiving the punishment due Adam and his descendants. Because unlike him, none were sinless or spotless, and thus could not pay the debt. Thus, Adam’s sin was imputed to Jesus Christ. Doctrinally, we call this the Atonement. Jesus’s resurrection overcame sin and death, and his righteousness, which he always possessed, is now imputed to his elect, who stand justified before God and are adopted into the family of God. Jesus removes our sin and transmits or imputes his righteousness and justice to us. That is regeneration. Atonement, imputation, justification, and regeneration are all necessary in the life of one who is saved and must be received and acknowledged as the only way of salvation. Today, Charles and I are going to discuss the counterfeits or false imputations, atonements, and justifications that are prevalent and rampant in a fallen society, and why it’s vital for believers to spot them and counter them. Andrea Schwartz (03:58) Charles, explain how our humanistic, rebellious society deals with these concepts of atonement and imputation. Charles Roberts (04:10) Well, I think the first thing right out of the starting gate is to understand that the idea of imputation is unavoidable, and it drives to the very heart of what Dr. Van Tille called the psychology of religion. And Dr. Rastuni also spoke of this issue, where Adam This sin, having been inherited by us, we find ourselves in a world in which we are at war with God, whether we think of that or not. And so unless, by God’s grace, our sin has been imputed to Christ or his righteousness imputed to us, I should say, this affects every aspect of our lives, the way we think, the way we discharge everything that we do in life, from eating, sleeping, going to a work. Everything is influenced by the fact that we are sinners unless we have been saved by God’s grace. And people realize this. That’s part of the biblical psychology of religion in that it recognizes and tries to communicate what Paul talks about in Romans 1, that the unbeliever knows there’s a God and knows that we are created in his image, and we try to close off that truth. We deny it at the fundamental level of our existence. Charles Roberts (05:28) And that creates, at a minimum, we say, a conflict in how we live our lives. And so unless people are redeemed by God’s grace and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, and so we can start living a clear, full life the way God intended, we’re constantly looking for the counterfeits and the substitutes, and we see this in every area. This is so fundamental that I think this is one of the great challenges that we face in Christianity. And many Christians and churches don’t begin to understand the foundation of the problems that we face and why the transformation of the individual life by the mercy and grace of God is the only way, the only solution to bringing about the larger changes that need to take place. And one area that I mentioned to you, and we can explore this to some extent as we go forward, because Dr. Rastuni talks about it in his writings on this, is how the phenomenon and the plague of pornography links into this very issue. He wrote an entire book on this subject, several, if we include the one on the Marquis de Sade, in which he talks about how the substitution of God’s plan for men and women in the marital relationship for something that is decadent and, by biblical standards, evil, to say the least, becomes a means by which men try to avoid the awareness that they are sinners in God’s sight, and it permeates every aspect of their being. Andrea Schwartz (06:59) So I’m glad you brought up the term evil because it’s not something that we normally hear in everyday discussion. Either on social media or regular media, we’ll hear about awful things that happen, and we hear that somebody was from a troubled background or there was a race component or there was whatever. There’s always reasons. But what you said earlier is that all these ideas that I mentioned earlier are inescapable ideas. Guilt is something everyone experiences because everyone knows, as Romans 1 says, that they’re at war with God, even though they don’t admit it. So you’re going to get a lot of explanations or reasons for why things happen: sinning with a good excuse, pleading to a lesser offense. I know I did that, but I did that because this person did something to me. So man yearns to be justified in his actions. And as I said at the beginning, justification only comes by Jesus’s death, resurrection, so his payment for our sins and our righteousness coming from him. Why do you think, when Bibles are readily available to people today, that even within the church, people seek justification for their porn problem or for their shady dealings with customers? Andrea Schwartz (08:33) What allows them to think that both of these things can be consistent at the same time? Charles Roberts (08:39) Well, because they either deny outright or they are ignorant of what the Bible actually teaches as to who they are in Christ or who they are not, if they’re not in Christ. And because churches, I think I can say largely, have given over sound doctrinal teaching and application imputation of God’s law word in every area of life for entertainment, church growth based on business tactics, where you don’t want to offend anyone else, you might not be able to sell the product, so to speak. It leads to everything being okay and open. Dr. Rastuni, in his systematic theology, where he talks about this, one of the chapters in the larger subject of atonement, section 5, concerning imputation, he makes this very interesting statement. He says, Because Jesus Christ is very God of very God, as well as very man and very man, our salvation is the work of eternity, not of time, and of the creator, and not of the creation. Now, that, I think, is a very fundamental point, because the people who want to operate in these areas that we’re talking about, whether it be pornography or shady business dealings or anything else, they’re operating from the perspective of everything being grounded in creation and time. Charles Roberts (09:56) They don’t see a larger transcendent factor to life. And so everything becomes bound by an evolutionary humanistic way of thinking to where pleasure, for example, or satisfaction, whether, again, that be through cheating people dishonestly in a business transaction or sexual fulfillment by proxy through pictures and films and who knows what else. All of these are corruptions of what the creator ordained for his creation, and they have implications generations, really, for all eternity. Andrea Schwartz (10:32) So when we’re talking about pornography, it’s really important to get away from the idea of the Playboy magazine, that being pornography or girly pictures or whatever. It’s really a world and life view, and a world and life view that’s in opposition to God’s law word. Sometimes it’s just too simple, and I think it’s too simple for people to just say it’s either it’s not going to be God’s way or it’s going to be sinful. Today, we have a lot of, and I’m sad to even have to admit it, there are a lot of men within Christendom who look at their pornography, addiction, or the use of it, like the way somebody sometimes overedes and shouldn’t do it. And so you have books like Every Man’s Battle. I don’t know. I don’t know that the Bible indicates that every man is going to have a battle with pornography, yet it almost becomes an affliction that, like other afflictions, whether it’s medical afflictions or whatever, that this is just a given. Is that part of the counterfeit that Rajduni talks about and we’ve been discussing this far? Charles Roberts (11:52) Yes, absolutely it is. I think that we need to keep in perspective that this is not a new problem. Of Of course, the prevalence and the availability, in this case of pornographic material is astoundingly available in our time because of technology. And it used to be if a man, much less likely a woman, wanted to go to some place to view pornographic films. That place that they would do that was on some dingy side of town, and they would go in the dead of night or something to that extent. Now, these things are right in your home, and you don’t have to worry about anybody seeing you and you feeling ashamed or guilty. Of course, we live in a society where guilt matters relating to God’s law is far less pronounced than it was decades ago. But yes, and I think this is something else that people who maybe want to excuse this on some level or other, whether… I’ve not read the book Every Man’s Battle. I’m familiar with the title, and I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that I doubt there’s one thing in that book that even begins to approach that subject the way Dr. Rushdoony, approached it on a far more fundamental level, and also from the standpoint of how this impacts society. Charles Roberts (13:07) Let me mention, as I said at the very beginning of this, that what I’m saying now, this is not a new problem. And one of the things that people who travel to the sites of ancient Rome and Greece can rather disturbingly come in contact with, are the pornographic images that are available in some ancient structures. I’ve not seen it, but it remains of the ancient city of Pompeii. I think there’s a whole section. I’ve seen a few documentaries about it, but apparently, they had an area for, I don’t know if it was prostitution, but the whole thing was decorated by very graphic pornographic images that would equal or rival everything that we have today. So pagan man was very much in tune with this way of thinking because he was locked in a mentality that everything was based on creation, and man is the highest expression of that creation. And so the seeking of pleasure, divorce from any biblical concept was high on his agenda. But it was also a very hopeless and pessimistic way of looking at life. And so whenever there is this emphasis, Especially in a society that has aspired on some level to be obedient and faithful to God’s way of life, it becomes, I mean, pornography in particular, a revolutionary premise. Charles Roberts (14:26) And it’s not too unusual to find that in places where there have been historically Christian societal roots, medieval Europe, for example, when people began to think about throwing off the way of looking at life that was totally dominated by a Christian worldview. Pornography played a big part of that. I’m thinking specifically of the French Revolution and the work of Marquis de Sade. Andrea Schwartz (14:53) A lot of people may or may not know that the term sadism comes from the application of the principles worldview of the Marquis de Sade. I think people are probably familiar with the term sadomasochistic, which means that the infliction of harm or destruction or whatever you want to call it to another person from one, and then the other person feeling like this is deserved, and so I’ll take it. A classic example would be the battered wife, that her husband is angry and takes it out on her, but she feels like, Well, I must deserve this, and so the cycle continues. Is that a religious worldview, sadomasochism? Charles Roberts (15:42) Absolutely, it is, as all of this that we’re talking about. Dr. Rastuni brings us out both in the section on imputation, but also in the book that is available from the Chalcedon store, Noble Savages, the retitle of a book that he had written many years earlier called The Politics of pornography. It is at heart a religious issue, as is everything in human society, and is either going to be the religion of humanism, which gives rise to this type of thinking and activity, or the religion of Holy Scripture, biblical Christianity, humanity. I think that people need to also be aware that we’re not talking about or advocating some distorted view of human sexuality. God created man and woman. He created sexuality, but he created it to be within the context of a monogamous married relationship, not some weird medieval distortion of it. So it’s not the issue of, should this type of relationship exist between men and women? But what is the proper context for that relationship to exist? And because there’s this fundamental denial of who human beings are outside of God and within the context of what he created us, we find these counterfeits. We find these aberrant examples of trying to pursue those things. Charles Roberts (17:04) And the sadomasochistic approach is one of them, where I’m the victim, I’m the one being beaten, and that’s somebody else’s fault, or it’s my fault. And so you get wrapped up in this whole way of thinking that is completely distorted. Human beings don’t treat each other this way if they understand who they are in God’s image. So it’s not unusual to find this type of pornographic material appealing to certain type of people. I think I may have mentioned this in previous podcast. I think I’ve mentioned just about everything else in previous podcast. But when I was an undergraduate and a philosophy major, I also double majored in religious studies. And oddly enough, my first encounter, and my only encounter, thank goodness, with the writings of Marquis de Sade was in religious studies. And it was a typical 1970s class called, and I’ll get this title now, Religion and the Literature of Stress. That was the title of the class. And among other things, we had to read one of the works of the Marquis de Sade, at least major sections of it. I don’t know if I should call the name of it or not, but it was one of them. Charles Roberts (18:11) At the time, I was thoroughly a pagan. I was not a Christian. And even for me, it was more than I could stomach. I mean, this guy was just so totally out to lunch. It’s hard to imagine that any human being could think and write like he did, and apparently, live like he did. But this is the phenomenon of man totally divorced from any accountability to anything other than himself and his own urges and desires, divorce from anything, but that being the highest expression of man. Andrea Schwartz (18:40) So I understand society in general is going to have obvious manifestations of rebellion against God. What often surprises people is within the church, within the body of professing believers, there isn’t a clear picture in this. And I think it goes back to the whole idea of antinomianism. And that is, if God’s word is what the Bible claims it is, then, as I said earlier, we don’t debate whether adultery is okay, is it understandable? It’s forbidden. Now, that doesn’t deny the fact that it happens, but it’s still forbidden. And I think with the idea that pornography is just a battle, as opposed to the manifestation of an idolatry of pleasure, if a person is married, that it is a form of adultery. If a person is not married, it’s a form of fornication. In either case, the Bible is clear that who will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven? So we end up having this idea that as long as we feel bad about these sins that we commit, then we’re on a better path than not caring at all, but not having the discipline and acknowledging, wait a minute, if God says this is and I am born again, then I have the power to turn away from it. Andrea Schwartz (20:05) We don’t have to struggle with it. We have to be saying, this is not right, and turn away from it. Charles Roberts (20:13) Yeah, and I’m thinking of something that was… I don’t think he… I don’t know if he said it or wrote it, but the comedian Woody Allen, who in some ways manifestsests the epitome of these types of things, not so much the pornography side, although that could be included in it, but the idea of humanistic man being a law or a God unto himself and the pessimism that goes along with that. He once made a statement that he did not have a problem with or he liked masturbation because it was having sex with someone he loved. And it meant to be humorous in the context, but wow, what a telling statement. Man is in love with himself, and his highest expression, according to that rather cynical statement, is to turn to run away from other human beings. The late Dr. Greg Bonson had, I don’t know if it was a written article, I think it might have been one of his lectures, that also had a very interesting take on this called Sex Without Persons. And all of this are distortions of what God’s plan for humanity is. And so, as I said, it inevitably leads to a pessimistic, hopeless life. Charles Roberts (21:23) And so human beings, whether it has to do with pornography, gluttony, whatever institute is being rolled out to try to fill that void that God’s law word is meant to fill in Christ, in humanity, the seeking of justification is constant, and it has to come from somewhere. And I think we both know where humanistic man almost always turns for his justification. He turns to the state. He turns to government. And so his government tells him, his state tells him, This is okay. This is permitted in a liberal permissive society. You are free to pursue your highest expression of who and what you think you want to be. And so it’s not unusual then to find that in a godly biblical society, as many of our states were, again, greater or lesser extent, things like pornography, blasphemy, these things were banned and illegal. And they were so because they violated the understanding of what God’s law requires for us. And as I mentioned before, in many places, the visible example of that was the availability of such things, whether it be prostitution or pornography or whatever else. It was on the other side of town. It was not readily available. Charles Roberts (22:44) And you had to risk being seen and that thing. Now, it’s dial up a number or get on your laptop or whatever it may be, or turn on your local TV station or even your local TV commercials. Some of them are more pornographic than some of the pornography was 50 years ago. Andrea Schwartz (23:04) And so this goes back to man knows he needs to be justified. Man knows that he’s a sinner. Deep down inside, everyone knows. But if you reorient yourself and to say, Okay, yeah, I’m a sinner, but the reason I’m a sinner is because of that person, whether it’s my spouse or someone in a relationship, a child, or because of the color of someone’s skin or because of someone’s ethnic origins. In other words, we’re going to try to find relief from guilt somewhere. And these are the ways they play out if it’s not done God’s way. Charles Roberts (23:47) Yes, exactly. And one of the things that Dr. Rastuni points out in the articles that we have been referring to is the fact that, especially in the 20th century and moving forward, people have been sold a bill of goods based on philosophical ideas that are based soundly in atheism, and that there is not only not a God, there can not possibly be a God. And he quotes or makes reference to the French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in these articles. And this is important, I think, because whether people have heard of Sartre or not, whether they’ve heard of him and are tired of about him, the fact is, what this man articulated has largely informed, whether acknowledged or not, the philosophy of life that many people in our society have adopted. And that is this, that man is born into a world that has no reason for being, and he finds within himself, he has no reason for being. There’s no God in whose image he’s created in. So if he’s going to have any meaning at at all, he has to come up with that himself. And so that creates this idea that whatever I can find to give my life meaning is okay for me. Charles Roberts (25:10) And if I run away from that responsibility, according to Sartre, That’s bad faith. I am exercising bad faith. And so I gravitate toward the idea that there’s a God, and the God, whatever it is, it defines who I am. So I don’t have to be facing up to this issue of defining who I am and choosing to be what I think I should be. The big philosophical phrase that was used is that man’s existence precedes his essence. So I exist first, but I have no essence. There’s nothing there, except I realize I’ve got to give myself meaning. And whether I’m Marquis de Sade or Stalin or whoever, I’m going to invest myself with the meaning of dominating others, a life of pornographic passion, a life of gluttony, a life of accumulating wealth, whatever it may be. Andrea Schwartz (26:01) And you know, Roche Duny, if he did anything, I typeset a lot of his books and commentaries over the years. And the verse of scripture that he probably highlights the most is Genesis 3: 5, the Fall, Man determining for himself right and wrong. And yet throughout his writings, the Marquis de Sade shows up a lot. And what Rushdoony has to say, even though he knows that Sade was antithetical to everything Christian, he was consistent in what he thought. If there is no God, then anything is permissible if I say it is. And so even though he didn’t get a chance to live out every aberration, because according to Rajduni, he spent a good amount of time in prison because the society at the time, at least, was rejecting him superficially, that in so many ways now, he has become almost the patron saint point of humanism in as much as even those churchgoing folk really don’t have a solid view that says, if the scripture says this and I don’t endeavor to receive it as truth and apply it in my life, and I look for ways to excuse my sin, to excuse those parts about myself that I know are unsavory. Andrea Schwartz (27:24) You hear it a lot when people say, Hey, I’m only human. And I always point out that after the sixth day of creation, God looked at humanity and said it was good. So our problem could never be that we’re human. Our problem is that we’re sinful. Charles Roberts (27:41) Yeah. And one of the things that he points out in the article on imputation is that man in the fallen state that he finds himself, he finds the whole idea of imputation as totally offensive. And so, again, this is a part of the battle, the war, I should say, that we find ourselves in against God’s standards unless he opens our eyes. And like we’ve already said, he cites Marquis de Sade as a classic example of false imputation and the irrespons that goes with the idea that I’m only accountable to myself and my passions, and this is what informs and gives my life meaning. And he talks about false imputation as an aspect of sin. And therefore, and this I think you’ll agree with me, the other popular passage in scripture that Rastuni quoted quite frequently was Proverbs 8: 36, all they that hate me are in love with death. And the me there being the wisdom of God personified. Andrea Schwartz (28:51) Scripture tells us that there’s nothing good in man, fallen man. But there’s everything good in redeemed man in as much as his sins are forgiven, and he’s been given the ability to not only not sin, but to pursue righteousness. And so I imagine there are a lot of people who cannot imagine a society without these kinds of evil perversions. You talk about commercials being pornographic. In many malls, the movie theaters are up on the second floor, and when the escalator goes down, you’re glaring at a lingerie store with big pictures of women in underwear. And nowadays, some of the pictures include men pretending to be women. And it’s pretty obvious that that’s what you’re looking at. So that this stuff is hitting people in the face all the time. And that’s what I said earlier, that if you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’s very easy to fall prey to it. So if somebody says, That’s wrong. They shouldn’t have that there. Well, don’t you think the human body is beautiful? I mean, after all, but that’s not the point. These things are all pointing to lead people into a perverted mindset. So the norm isn’t grow up, get married, have children, and be an intact family. Andrea Schwartz (30:21) It’s to have an exciting life, a playboy life, the James Bond life, or whatever it is. So we have these counterfeits that are going to tell people, This will make you happy. Charles Roberts (30:31) I think you were right on target with something you said earlier about the factor of antinomianism in the churches and in the Christian world being one source of this problem. We can both think back to the era of the 1960s, maybe late ’50s, included in which there was massive cultural upheaval among younger people, and a lot of it had to do with throwing off what was perceived to be the stuffy surface only religious faith of their parents, whether that was Protestant or Catholic, or in between. And maybe there was something to that on one level. But the problem was that there was no one coming forth with a biblical explanation as to what the problem is and a biblical solution. So I think that the Satanic elements in our culture at that time recognized an opportunity to capitalize on destroying the biblical foundations of our culture, and that included the promotion of so-called free love, and the distortion of music, all of these things that had informed Christian and biblical culture. So it wanted to create a distortion of those things. So we’ve gone from the dirty movie house on the other side of town to where the dirty movie house is now right inside your living room on your desktop. Charles Roberts (31:53) Or your phone. Or your phone. Yeah. And it’s no longer considered, quote, dirty. What considered dirty, is the opposition to such a thing. And when humanism begins to decay and degrade, as it is in our time, it never stays where it was. And so we have gone from a place place where they’ve always been, for example, pedophiles, but they’ve either, thankfully, been put in jail or executed. But now we’ve gone to a time where it’s not only severely as punished as it once was, in some areas, not at all, but in some, it’s openly acknowledged and celebrated. And I think that we will see a continued spiral in that one area of the direction where the decadence becomes even more and more pronounced. Andrea Schwartz (32:42) When I was growing up, it wasn’t unusual for families to be celebrating grandma and grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary. There were a lot of those celebrations. Well, this year I’m coming up on 50 years of marriage. And when I share that information conformation with people, they’re astounded. A lot of young people like, I just don’t know how you do it. It was never a question of how you did it. You got up in the morning, you lived your life, you dealt with what was going on, and you continued. Not that it was all flowers and roses and such, but we’ve gotten such a view that says, If it’s difficult, it must be repudiated, and I’ll find temporary enjoyment, pleasure, fulfillment without considering the fact that oftentimes what they’re doing is signing their own death warrant in one way or another. Charles Roberts (33:37) Yes. And just to cycle back for a moment, something I was saying earlier about the revolutionary nature of this type of activity and the things we’re discussing. In James Bellington’s book, Fire in the Minds of Men, which is a massive study of revolutionary activity across the Western world, in particular dating back hundreds of years. And he focused an entire section on the French Revolution. He pointed out that what we would have thought of as pornographic houses, coffee shops where people would get high, the things that bubbled up to the surface in the ’60s and ’70s, to some extent. All of those things were around in the era of the French Revolution, and they were manifestations at the time of throwing off this medieval, in that case, Roman Catholic culture. And again, people who have a vested interest in promoting a Satanic way of thinking, they will seize on these things and drive them even faster. And it’s worth considering insofar as our listeners are concerned about having a biblical world and life view for themselves and their families and their society, who are the people behind the promotion of pornography or gluttony or a host of other things that distort God’s plan for humanity? Charles Roberts (34:59) Humanity. They are, without exception, people who hate the name of Christ, who hate the very idea of being accountable to a sovereign God in his law. Andrea Schwartz (35:09) And as you pointed out earlier in terms of the state, the whole public school system, we’ve discussed this in the past, started as a countermeasure to Christianity, but they were patient in as much as they couldn’t come out and say that right in the beginning. But a lot of the battle that goes on today between homeschool families in the state has everything to do with wanting children to be exposed to such things. Now, let’s face it, even 15, 20 years ago, having men dressed up as women coming in to read to young children would be considered an aberration. Today, it’s somewhat mandated in certain places. On top of that, when Christian families say, No, we don’t want this for our children, we’ll take care of education. In many places, the state, the Board of Education comes after them. Yeah, some people say it’s because they want the money that would be allocated for students, but that’s just a byproduct. What they want to do is instill a different world and life view. And that’s why it’s very hard for me to go face to face with Christians who say, this is our reason for our children going to the public school. Andrea Schwartz (36:26) It’d be like saying, this is the reason for me to let my child out in the midst of herd of wild animals because you see, we have to do this or that. When all is said and done, either you believe what the Bible says or you don’t, and how many people are literally sacrificing their children for their own pleasure or their own, some lifestyle that they want to maintain. Charles Roberts (36:49) I’m glad you brought this up because even here in what used to be one of the buckles of the Bible Belt in South Carolina, and especially the part where I live, a few years ago, we went through a brouhaha about Drag Queen Story Hour. Those were being done at public libraries. And it’s interesting to consider, I don’t know if this is an issue out where you are in California, maybe it was, and it is no longer, but here and in other places, one of the big, big controversies, at least it’s still a controversy, is people who are wanting to put into public libraries books that can only be defined as pornographic under the guise of being educational or part of a story, but they’re aimed exclusively at children. And so there’s just been huge legal battles about trying to corral this activity. And in many places, it just simply isn’t successful because, again, the larger society has no other ground to stand on except humanism, and what the state says is okay. And that leads inevitably to the decadence that we’re seeing in that area. Andrea Schwartz (37:56) Anything that’s perverse usually starts in California. So I’m pretty sure that the people who instituted this in South Carolina are devotés of the California brand of humanism, where the state will tell everybody what they have to do. But I think another important point here is to recognize that sometimes the counterfeits are more pleasant to look at. And by that, I mean conservatism. Every now and then, I’ll tune in to, quote, unquote, conservative news sources, stations, whatnot. And it’s amazing to me in how much of the dialog that goes back and forth, whether it’s strict news or commentary or even late night entertainment, how base they are, how the illusions to sexual promiscuity are there. It’s littered into their conversation, and they’ll make comments, or their conversation will be quite base. But you see, they’re conservative. And so are we looking at a tone and imputation and justification through conservativism and thereby having to accept, there’s some good with the bad, but these guys are right politically? How can you be right politically if you’re not right scripturally? Charles Roberts (39:15) Yeah. As we begin to wrap this up, I want to quote Rushdoony again in the article from the section on Atonement and Imputation in a systematic theology, Fallen man imputes sin and guilt to others, and he requires the sacrifice of the victim’s social class as the remedy for his sin. And fallen man thus denies responsibility. He imputes responsibility together with sin and guilt to his appointed scapegoat. And he says, Fault imputation is thus at heart an imputation and transfer of responsibility. The society of fallen Adam is thus not a society, but a state of war. To me, this is just astounding in Insight. And we, at our peril, at our disadvantage, have failed to pay attention to the insight that he had on this topic. And it’s not so much Rushdoony’s insight, it’s the biblical perspective. And if you don’t start with scripture as the absolute standard and God’s law word, you start spiraling out onto other areas, and you wind up with the situation we have today in the churches. Andrea Schwartz (40:27) Noble Savages is a book. It’s not an easy read. I can remember being at homeschool conventions and selling Rushdoony’s books, and then I would have a section on the table that said, For Fathers Only. And it’s amazing how many men went to that and they started looking at it and I said, You have to understand what your family is going to be exposed to and is being exposed to. When I say it’s not an easy read, Rushdoony doesn’t hold back in describing what people think and what they do and how they do it. But it’s so important to know. It’s not like reading about it will make you sin. No, reading about it will let you understand exactly how much of a war this really is. And then you also mentioned his systematic theology in volume one. There’s a whole chapter on the Atonement where he really goes through all the different aspects of what we call salvation. But then once you read and understand it, you’ll see how many false methods of salvation are promoted, even within churches. Charles Roberts (41:37) Yeah, and I’d like to mention one other resource that’s available from the Chalcedon.edu store, and that’s his book, called To be as God, which is a study of the philosophy of life of Marquis de Sade. Maybe that’s too academic description of it. I mean, it really highlights the example of this despicable man, and and how he chose to live his life as one totally divorced from accountability to God. It’s a fascinating read. It’s not anything high-brow academic in that sense. I would encourage anyone who wants to pursue this further in that particular instance to get hold of that book as well. Andrea Schwartz (42:14) Yeah, and when I said difficult read, I didn’t mean it was going to be over your head. I knew Dr. Raj Jr. Personally, and I would read his books and I’d say, I’d see your footnotes. How do you read these books? Because he said, Well, I don’t recommend The average person read these books because in many cases, they’re gross and they’re despicable. But I need to highlight for people the contrast. And so consider this like we have a lot of discussion on the roots of COVID and are vaccines good or not. You can’t really get into the issue unless you understand the underlying issue. If you’re against vaccination, you would know that, okay, there are certain things that are included in vaccinations that aren’t necessarily helpful to people, and you’d examine it, and as I said earlier, from the bottom up. People need to do the same thing with these topics. Otherwise, they’ll just think that, well, I don’t know, maybe it’s a good thing when an actual fact, as you pointed out, it’s actually warfare. Charles Roberts (43:22) Exactly. I would exhort our listeners to make themselves aware of this challenge relating to the corruption of pornography, specifically, but the larger issue of imputation, insofar as people even are familiar with that word, it’s something in a systematic theology book, Other Than Rushdoony, that has a classic definition the reckoning of Christ’s righteousness to us, and then just leave it there and go on to the next topic. But it is a far more significant point than that. Andrea Schwartz (43:53) Well, Charles, thanks. I hope we gave insight to people, if nothing else, for them to realize there’s more they need to investigate. Right. Outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com is how you reach us, and we look forward to you joining with us next time. Charles Roberts (44:09) Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.…

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332: Can Faith and Science Truly Coexist? 1:08:33

29 days ago1:08:33

1:08:33

This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . (00:03) Welcome to out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question. (00:09) While providing real solutions for biblical world and life View. (00:13) Your host is Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor and founder of the Chalcedon Teacher Training Institute. Andrea Schwartz (00:21) SIGHT is a recent American biographical drama about physician Ming Wang, a Chinese immigrant to the United States who became a renowned eye surgeon. It is based on Wang’s 2016 autobiography entitled From Darkness to A Journey From Hardship to Healing. My husband and I recently watched this film and although we liked it very much, I kept having a sneaking suspicion that there was much more to the story than was depicted in the movie. Since the film was based on Dr. Wang’s autobiography, I quickly ordered the book and confirmed my suspicions. Dr. Wang’s story is one of a man’s desire to become a doctor from his youth, beating the odds, as they say, against his early life and upbringing in atheist communist China in the 60s and 70s, then coming to the US and getting his PhD in physics and his MD from Harvard Medical School and eventually becoming a citizen. Ming Wang was and is a driven person, but it was only when he encountered the Lord Jesus Christ that his entire life, skills and opportunities came into sharper focus. After finishing his autobiography, I went to his website and contacted him there, requesting an interview. In less than 24 hours I received a personal affirmative response. Thanks for Joining me today, Dr. Wang. Dr. Ming Wang (01:53) Thank you Andrea. I appreciate the opportunity. Andrea Schwartz (01:56) And just as an aside, I wasn’t intending to say this, but Dr. Wang’s family had to shelter last evening as four tornadoes went through his area in Nashville, Tennessee. And I’m so glad he’s still here, not only for the opportunity to talk with him, but also because of the work that he he does. So Again, thank you Dr. Wing. Dr. Ming Wang (02:20) Thank you Andrea. Andrea Schwartz (02:21) Now, while we will give relevant content from your life in our discussion today, I don’t want people to neglect reading or listening to your book. And although I found the film very engaging in retrospect, there were some additions and omissions that I know are often used to consolidate a story. But I found your account in your book to give true appreciation and credit to the providence and foreordination of God. I know you’ve told your story numerous times, but give the highlights for my listeners, please. Dr. Ming Wang (02:56) Thank you Andrea. You know, as a scientist, one of the things we tend to do after have acquired certain knowledge about science and technology is get our head too big, think we can do everything. My autobiography From Darkness to Sight is not only the journey of many of our Foundations, patients, some blind orphan children and some other adult patients. Their remarkable journey from darkness to sight, physically getting physical vision, but also how at the same time, these patients and life itself that I’ve gone through have also opened my eyes and brought me out of my darkness to light spiritually. I grew up in China during the time called cultural revolution. From 1966-76, the government in China shut down all universities and colleges of entire nation and forcefully deported to some of the poorest part of the country and condemn each one of the high school graduates to lifetime of poverty and hard Labor. So over 10 years of cultural Revolution, by shutting down all universities and colleges of entire China, they send away to labor camp for life 20 million young people. So I called that in 1974, I was 14, I finished my junior high and I was not allowed to go to high school as I was going to be deported just like 20 million others for life, for hard labor. Dr. Ming Wang (04:41) In order to escape that devastating fate of being sent away to labor camp, I started learning a music instrument called Chinese violin, Er Hu, which is depicted in the film Sight, and also started learning dancing. Because I found out if I could play a music instrument and dance, I could get into the government song and dance troupe, therefore avoid being sent away to labor camp. That did not work and I was going to be sent away to labor camp for sure. Then 1976 rolled around. Cultural Revolution ended after 10 years. China reopened all of its colleges, first time in 10 years. And I had to jump ahead from 9th grade graduate to 12th grade, directly into 12th grade and compete against other 12th graders for the 1% chance of less than 1% chance of getting to college. Because my parents did not want me to go through the normal high school because they were afraid the government could change their mind again and shut down college again for the following year, for another 10 years. The point is that sometimes living in a free country such as America, here we could take the freedom that we have for granted. Dr. Ming Wang (06:00) But in a country at the time when there was no freedom, when freedom came briefly, people do appreciate and want to take full advantage of it because freedom may not be available again. So with my parents help, I worked really hard, as you saw in the film site, eventually got into university to study laser physics. And in 1982, with $50, I came to America, could not speak the language very much English and did not know anyone. But I was happy because I was free. You know, in the film Andrea God’s Not Dead, the Chinese student who came from China to America to study surviving China’s Cultural Revolution. That Chinese student character in the movie God’s Not Dead is inspired by my life story. So just like that student, I came to America. I was an atheist. I was interested only in science. I was not interested in anything else because before I came, I couldn’t even study to be free to study science. And it was in America where I not only found freedom, but also I have found faith in Jesus Christ. Andrea Schwartz (07:21) Let me ask you a question, because I think this is important both in the movie and in the book. You come from a very strong family, a family that was willing to give up tremendous amounts to even give you an opportunity to. To the point. And this is an amusing part of the story as far as I’m concerned, that when they were shielding you from having to be deported, they would sometimes sneak you into classes so you could learn by just, you know, auditing the class and such. But there was this strong desire. How do you reconcile the fact that in an atheist country, you have such strong family ties? Dr. Ming Wang (08:02) Great question. I think the family. The fact that parents love their children. They want to do everything possible to help their children so that their children could have a future that probably transcends culture, ethnicity, race, religion across humankind. It’s a universal love, our parents towards their children. However, in the atheist country, which China still largely is, that desire is mainly for, shall we say, worldly success, if you will. You know, getting a job, get a good education and have a happy life. That is that dimension. It’s important. But I’ve come to realize after coming to America, the normal societal or modern society’s criteria of success, meaning having a job and successful, is only part of it. It’s actually. It’s less important part of it. The more important part of my life has been in the past many decades, as depicted in the film God’s Not Dead, where, you know, the student went from atheist to a believer. That student, inspired by my life, that I find something even more important than the worldly success that is a life that following Jesus Christ and developed the ultimate purpose for my life beyond what I normally do in my job. Andrea Schwartz (09:37) What I can tell you in reading your book, more so than in the film, I live in California and there is a substantial Asian community, Chinese community here. And what people often see are people who are so driven to succeed. So the students here from Chinese families have the higher SAT scores. They excel in music not unlike you. And it’s all because they want to bring honor to their family and success to themselves. Do you think that it’s easy for people to misconstrue the mindset because they don’t understand the kind of oppression and tyranny that a lot of these people, either their parents or their grandparents experienced. Dr. Ming Wang (10:28) You mean misconstrue from the Westerner perspective? Andrea Schwartz (10:32) Yes. Dr. Ming Wang (10:33) Yeah, you are right that it is often sometimes not understood completely from people outside the Asian community. The motivation, the drive. Why is these Asian families so driven and you know, tiger mom and drive their kids to study so hard and excel in school that such a all consuming drive for the kids and for the parents, for their kids. Of course it’s for better life as any other race, ethnicity, people. But. But even beyond that, that is very often these Asian families have a background, whether their parents directly or their parents parents have suffered, have lived through societies that did not have very much at all in the way of freedom or material well being or opportunity. And so these Asian families, many of them just on my own, my parents very driven and have inspired me, imprinted me starting very young age to work hard and had a lot to do with the fact that many of these Asian families did not have much in the past and they appreciate so much more what they have now. Andrea Schwartz (11:55) Okay, so let’s go back to you. Before you came to the US you had an interest in medicine, both your parents were physicians and you also had an interest in physics. So when you came to the US those two interests combined. Talk a little bit about that. Dr. Ming Wang (12:13) I always wanted to be a doctor just like my father. You may think that, you know, being a doctor in China during those days, during Cultural Revolution is a well paying job. It actually is not. What I’m about to tell you and your listeners, Andre, is going be shocking. My dad was a doctor and my mom a teacher. Their combined salaries, both of them combined salaries every month was only US$15 combined salaries. So it’s like how could anyone live on that? It is extremely poor and everybody was poor in China during Cultural Revolution. But I wanted to be a doctor not because of my father is wealthy, is because I saw how he took care of his patients as a kid. Because we didn’t have telephone, we did not have bathroom, we did not have running water in our house and we didn’t have kitchen. Just one room, everything’s in that room. And no telephone, as I said. So very often that we will be eating dinner at little table and usually dinner consists of only one or two dish, you know, rice and one vegetable. That’s it. Often the door, someone would be, somebody will be knocking on the door. Dr. Ming Wang (13:31) And we have zero idea who that was. Because we have no telephone. People cannot make canonic appointment. So when we open the door very often it was a patient of my father just showed up saying, Dr. Wang, I have some questions about my health and we just have to put our dinner aside. And my father started seeing these patients and taking care of them. So that dedication to helping people, taking care of folks imprinted me at a very young age. And I want to be like him, be a doctor. So after I come to America, first I studied laser physics because I studied in universities in science in China and then came to America. So I got enrolled at University of Maryland for laser physics, PhD, which I did, did finish that, and finished postdoc at MIT at age 26. I was a laser physicist. Then I realized the rapid development of technology in ophthalmology. That laser is transforming the eye care, eye surgeries. And also as I depict in the book, I met a patient who was born blind and all, she had never seen. So when I asked her then, what does red mean to you or blue mean to you? Dr. Ming Wang (14:50) She told me that red means something warm and fluffy and blue something cold and slippery. So I realized that for someone who never had sight or could not see, they lose a big part of human experience. And so I decided I’m going to use my PhD laser physics training and become a medical doctor in ophthalmology in eye surgery so that I can combine my technological training and PhD in laser physics with an MD. Then I can be a unique laser eye surgeon who can bring an extra level of technology and advancement to help folks who are living in darkness. And helping bring them out of darkness is probably the most exciting thing one can possibly do. Andrea Schwartz (15:42) You know, it’s interesting. I’ve always told people that one of the most fascinating things for anybody is to teach someone how to read. Because those black dots on the page go from meaning nothing to suddenly meaning whatever the author wanted it to mean. So as you’re exploring and you eventually got your MD from Harvard Medical School, as I said, now you’re in a position to tackle the cases that other people either couldn’t or wouldn’t. What made the combination of your PhD in physics and your MD, who were you able to help that previously people were not able to help? Dr. Ming Wang (16:23) Great question, Andrea. If you look, if we look at the modern medicine and science in the 21st century, compare with medicine 100 years ago, the transforming trend as what’s happening in medicine is the increasing importance of technology. 100 years ago, if you had a headache. And the doctor said, take aspirin and call me 8:00 in the morning. And very little thing the doctor could do. Today in medicine, technology has really literally leapfrogged us into the next stage in molecular biology, genetic engineering, stem cell research, in robotic medicine, now in artificial intelligence, laser technology really rapidly change the way we treat diseases and open the possibilities of treating new diseases. Now at this juncture, there’s a problem, that is all doctors have gone to medical school, so they have got very good training in biology, pharmacology, physiology, medicine. But almost none of the doctors, very few that into medicine, got MD degree from medical school, will have a comparable amount of time to study another half of medicine, which is technology. So my training in the other half, having a PhD also in laser physics in addition to MD, it’s allowed me to go into some of the difficult to treat or nearly impossible to treat human eye conditions, utilizing my strong training in technology, in this case laser physics, to really open up the treatment possibilities in those. Dr. Ming Wang (18:19) So, for example, I’ll give you two examples. One, all of us, you and me, Andrea, and all of your listeners, doesn’t matter who you are. As a human being going through our lives at some point, inescapably, we are affected by these five human prescription eye conditions. Nearsightedness, which is myopia, Farsightedness, which is a hyperopia, astigmatism. Sometimes people say, what is astigmatism? Dr. Wang? Astigmatism simply means your eyeball is shaped like American football rather than basketball. So you see things always elongated and distorted with astigmatism. Number four, presbyopia, which is over age 45, increasing difficulty reading up close, and finally, cataracts. These are five human eye conditions that all of us are affected. For the longest time we could not treat, for example, astigmatism, and we certainly could not treat presbyopia. The oldeyes, if you will, over age 45, reading difficulty up close, or try to get rid of reading glasses, that was not possible. In fact, up until a few years ago, we could not treat the presbyopia, the reading difficulty over age 45. Somebody comes to talk to me, say, Dr. Wang, do you have anything for me? I’m getting older, I have to push things further and further to read. Dr. Ming Wang (19:47) Could you help me? Since we couldn’t help, say, Johnny the patient. I used to tell my patient, I said, johnny, you’re getting old. It’s not your eye problem. Because I couldn’t fix it. I said, you’re getting older. The reason you have to push things further and further away to read is because your arm’s getting shorter. And they say, oh, doctor, one relay. So what is that diagnosis called? And I said, well, it’s called short arm syndrome. And they said, really? So can you treat it? I said, yeah, you come to me, I will pull your arm out for about extra 2 inches and then take care of it. But now we don’t have to extend your arms anymore. We can have a technology called forever young lens can actually get rid of not only your distant vision glasses, but also your reading glasses. You know, living in Nashville, Tennessee, I have my share of my patients in music industry, like Dolly Parton, Charlie Daniels, for example, Charlie Daniels, for example, before he passed away, I did his eye surgery when he was in his 60s. And I told Charlie, I said, I’ve gotten rid of your distance glasses and I have permanently, permanently got rid of your reading glasses as well. Dr. Ming Wang (20:57) And Charlie goes, so you mean Dr. Wang, I could be 99 years old and my vision will still be this good that you just restored. I feel like I’m 25. I say, yes, the rest of your body may get older, but not your eyes. That’s why it’s called forever young lens technology. So these technologies open up. For example, you say, is that everybody using it? No. Forever young lens, for example, it’s only used by less than 1%. Less than 1% of United States eye surgeons today, only less than 1%, 99% are not using these cutting edge technologies. So not only I’ve been able to help develop and I’ve been part of the research team in helping developing, but also I want to help the doctors. 99% of them did not have the opportunity to study laser physics in depth as I did. So I have also been teaching. I have published 10 textbooks in ophthalmological eye surgery. Technology aspect to help the surgeons around the world to improve their weak area, which is technology. I want the 99% of surgeons who are not using these top technologies to quickly adapt and learn because we want to offer, all of us want to offer the best technology to our patients. Dr. Ming Wang (22:19) That’s an example. The other example we can talk about in the context of faith in our upcoming discussion, how the extra technology training in laser physics also have helped me in that case to help blind orphan children who are in darkness. Andrea Schwartz (22:36) And again, I want people to read your book because I think it’s. I found it hard to get put down because I felt like by the end of the book, we’d become old friends, and I knew a lot about you. And so there was a lot of work you did with children born blind or cruelly abused by parents and became blind as a result. But I have to tell you, the thing that actually affected me the most, and this is one of the problems I had with the film, because it didn’t bring out your ethics as much as your book did. In the film, they have you in a room somewhere, seeing a preborn child in a lab in formaldehyde or something, and you come to the conclusion that children in the womb don’t scar. And so I know this is true in terms of your book, that you realize that if you somehow could use amniotic fluid or something of that, that you could create a contact lens that might help after eye surgery, that people wouldn’t have the normal scarring. Dr. Ming Wang (23:36) Right. Andrea Schwartz (23:37) What the movie didn’t depict. And that’s when I was. Was going through the book and I went. I knew there was something more to this story. You knew that embryonic cells could be used to do this. But your ethics as a Christian said we cannot destroy human life or use human life that has been destroyed. And I imagine you got a lot of pushback from fellow scientists whose ethics were probably, no, you do whatever you do for science. But I think it was almost 10 years and you refused to disobey God in order to obey God. And that’s probably the biggest takeaway from your book for me. Dr. Ming Wang (24:22) Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. First of all, the book is 10 times stronger from Christian faith perspective than the movie. And the movie actually was written by wonderful Christian director Andrew Hyatt, who directed the film Paul Apostle Christ. When he took on this project, he intentionally tried to kind of soften down the faith perspective because his goal is trying to get more people, including skeptics, atheists, wants to see a movie, tell the story as is, with less preaching. However, the book itself that I wrote is much stronger, 10 times stronger from faith perspective. And what you just talked about is exactly the central theme of the book. Exactly central theme. That at one time there are lots of stories of these kids and patients, our foundation being the help over the decades to come from darkness to light physically. But even more important, more important is that these medical advances that we have been able to be obedient and we be able to listen to God, we’d be able to advanced science, but at the same time, they’re safeguarding our moral ethical principles and the Christian principles about the sacredness of life. So that is exactly the Central, the golden part of the book, my life story. Dr. Ming Wang (25:54) In this case, the issue affects not just me, but also actually affects the world in a very big way. Today, for example, Pew studies have shown other kids entering college these days in America, 100 kids entering college, going to church as freshmen. By the time they finish college four years later, 75 out of 100 kids have left church. It is an existential crisis as far as I’m concerned for us as Christians because these young people are the future, our future. So we got to study, we got to figure out why. Why is it young people are exiting Christian faith, especially in academia, universities, right in such a big number. I feel because I’m a scientist and a Christian both that I realize is because of the rapid development of science itself that people are studying genetic engineering, you know, human genome, artificial intelligence. ChatGPT. They feel that they do not. Some young people feel that they don’t need Christ, they don’t need it. The science is sufficient and to help, to get a job and to help. However, my book, the essence of my book as you pointed out, is about faith and science conflict and what does God want us to do, right, to advance science, at the same time protecting life. Dr. Ming Wang (27:22) That I have come to realize that which is the essence of my book is that science is important. It’s necessary, you know, it’s the tools. You cannot be lazy. You got to learn those, you know, knowledge, scientific, technology. But science is just tools. It’s just necessary, but it’s not sufficient to have a uplifting life. That the sufficient part is a purpose. What are you going to use those science tools for? And after I became a Christian, I’ve been praying is that yes, God put me through, you know, let me go through those sufferings in China so that I appreciate more what I have in America today. But also all these years of studying two doctor degrees, one PhD in laser physics, one MD in medicine, what is it God you want me to do all these studies? I’ve gone to school, Andrea, believe it or not, 31 years. Andrea Schwartz (28:16) No, I believe you. Dr. Ming Wang (28:18) Yeah, whoever. And then what is God you want me to do that’s specific for you? And so much praying and living through my life and going up and down, many failures as you saw in the book. I realized God want me to use my scientific training, hard earned medical technology training to help those who need the most help, which are blind orphan children. So that’s a purpose. That what I’m going to use the scientific now this sense the science is necessary but not sufficient. The sufficient Part is the purpose. We’re going to use the science tool and also this understanding the rapid development of science and technology, such as ChatGPT, AI, while it’s wonderful, those technologies, but it could also be disastrous. In fact, the destructive power of artificial intelligence, not properly guided, could be 1 million times more destructive than atomic bomb. So I’ve come to realize that not only science is told, faith is the purpose, but also at the time of rapid science and technology development, today we need more Christ, not less, because we need faith to guide our scientific research so that the science will produce positive benefit to humankind rather than destruction. Dr. Ming Wang (29:44) So now my purpose, writing the book From Darkness to Sight and in some limited way that, you know, made into movie, is to talk to these young people to help them realize that you’re studying science at technology, in universities. Good. You cannot be lazy. You got to, you know, to really be good in those scientific. But that’s only part of it and that’s only the tools. And you need more Christ, not less, because more than ever before, you need faith in Christ to guide your moral, ethical, faith principles, to guide your research so that your science can truly bring benefit rather than destruction to humankind. So in this case, lots of young people think, oh, okay, but what if the science and faith get into conflict? You know, stem cell embryonic research demonstrate tremendous potential to treating human diseases. And you’re absolutely right, Andrea. Some atheist scientists say, I don’t care. I’m going to use these, you know, embryonic cells to, I’m treating patients, I’m helping them. So I have a noble goal. But what I’ve come to realize that God does want us to do research, does want to improve the quality of life, but at the same time, God also want us to preserve life. Dr. Ming Wang (31:00) And people tend to think, and that’s part of the reason why young people leaving churches in universities, they think science and faith cannot work together. You know, and I will say this way, it is true many scientists need to learn about faith, but also it is also true that many Christians should learn about science. So in other words, in order to bring these folks, these atheists, these skeptics to Christ, we have to find that common ground. We have to reach out to them as well. You know, we have to speak the language of the listener. The scientists need to learn about Christ and the Christians should also learn about science. You know, one time I was at church, the pastor said, oh, I’ve got headache, everybody. You know, brother and sister in Christ, please pray for me. I don’t believe this Medicine stuff. Pray for me. Okay, so we pray for him. Next morning, 8:00, he pick up the phone and call his doctor. So there’s some problem in the inconsistency and young people watching these inconsistencies in us, you know, you know, and how come Christian is not confronting the science and faith conflict in a modern technological driven society. Dr. Ming Wang (32:16) So my book, and through the amnion membrane contact lens story, is trying to, in fact, I pray about it. I want to help these patients through fetal healing, but I did not want to hurt the baby’s life. So I was literally stuck for about 10 years. Wanted to research to help blind patients, but restore the eyesight, reducing eye scarring because a fetus does not scar. But at the same time, I did not want to hurt the baby. And through much praying, and that’s also what I come to realize. That’s why I’ve become a Christian. Becoming a Christian means I’m going to follow Jesus Christ, I’m going to ask him for help when I got stuck in my life, whatever it is. So through much praying and also at the time, working with some Christian medical doctors at the same time, we come to realize that, well, maybe the reason a fetus, an unborn child can heal without scar is because the amnio membrane protection before birth. So I got lots of placentas donated by me, to me by mothers. After giving birth to children, they don’t need a placenta anymore. So I got a placenta brought in the laboratory and started doing research. Dr. Ming Wang (33:26) And eventually I developed the amnio placenta contact lens. When I put these placenta contact lenses onto injured eyes, Andrea, miracle happened. Basically, the eye. Think about your little eye cell on the eye surface. Look up, you see the little tent. And near the tent and the eye cell maybe say, oh, I was mistaken. We were not born yet. And the way that our body tends to behave before birth is regeneration or healing without scar. There are many of those patients with amniomembrane contact lens treatment that have their eyesight restored. Then I ask myself the question, did I really invent the amniotic membrane contact lens? Interestingly, I concluded no, because I’m not just a scientist, I’m also a Christian. So I did not invent the amniotic membrane. I did not invent the placenta. God did. As a scientist and a Christian, I was just very lucky and privileged to be given a precious little opportunity by God to catch a little glimpse of part of his original creation. So credit should go to where credit belongs. So I decided as A Christian, I should not take credit for this invention of amnio membrane contact lenses. So I decided to donate my invention to the world. Dr. Ming Wang (34:47) I put my patent MNL membrane contact lens patent online so everybody around the world can see it instantaneously. And also I went around the world over a 20 year period or so to about 50 some countries free of charge, taught over 10,000 eye doctors how to use this technology. So today, as you see in the film site, and neural membrane contact lens technology, wonderful technology, can help restore eyesight in many blind patients including blind orphan children. Has really transformed the world. It’s now used by eye doctors from nearly every nation and millions of patients eyesight have been restored. It’s actually a $5 billion industry right now worldwide. Now, even though in the process 20 years process, I did not make any money myself because I donated the technology in the beginning my patent, I feel I did the right thing as a scientist and a Christian, meaning I’m privileged to do the research, to learn the skill, the tools. But I recognize ultimate the purpose what I’m doing using this technology for is to glorify God, is to satisfy, to bring about his purpose which is to save more people and to help science advance helping patients, but at the same time protecting life and non violating Christian principles. Andrea Schwartz (36:11) Well listeners, that’s why after reading the book, I knew I needed to share Dr. Wang with you. And another comment about your book is you are not afraid to talk about mistakes, failures, regrets. And you could easily have omitted parts of personal life that aren’t picture perfect. But because the people you met along the way contributed to all the pieces coming together, including going back to China and being a musician and being a dancer. We see that Psalm 139 is true, that before God formed you, he knew you and he knew everything that was going to happen that he foreordained. So it’s not that what you thought back as a child in China wasn’t true, but it wasn’t the complete truth. The complete truth was God had plans for you and he was going to fashion your life. And in the process you got your doses of humility and heartache and understanding. But in the book you always go back to remembering what it was like not only to be a young person in China, but to remember what it was like before Christ was in your life. And I, I thought that was the part that truly encouraged me. Andrea Schwartz (37:37) And I could see that if we all looked at that way instead of talking about oh poor me, look at all the terrible things that have happened in My life, I’m such a victim to realize that God fashions us to specifically do the things he created us to do. Dr. Ming Wang (37:53) Exactly. Exactly the purpose of it. Right. I used to not understand why I have to go through the suffering during Cultural Revolution. And as an atheist, I have no idea why. But after I become a believer, looking back, I recognize the plan that God has a plan. God has a purpose of allowing me going through those sufferings during Cultural Revolution, China, and not being able to go to school, going to high school, and was going to be deported, labor camp is because he wanted me as a person to grow, to grow compassion, understanding. And the connection, in this case, with the patients I see today who are in darkness, because I know how they feel because I used to be in darkness myself. So very often they say, what’s the difference, having become a Christian? The difference is I realize that God has a plan for me, even though I may not understand at the time, you know, going through setbacks, sometimes we say why God has to put me through this difficulty. Why God has a. Why it may not be apparent to us at the time, but trust in him. When you look back later in life and you’re able to see a little bit the bigger picture, bigger plan that God has for us, you will realize why. Andrea Schwartz (39:14) And another aspect to that is. And they showed it a little bit in the movie, but not so much as that you depicted it in the book, that before you would do a surgery, you would commit the surgery to the Lord. And I imagine you had a lot of atheist staff potentially watching you say, okay, let’s pray right now. Scripture tells us to pray without ceasing. And sometimes I get people laughing at me. I say, I pray for parking spaces. I mean, I. I’ll pray for whatever I particularly need or want at the time. Sometimes God’s answ is yes, sometimes it’s no. Not all the surgeries that you did that you committed to the Lord turned out the way everybody hoped. But there’s one story about the little girl from India who everybody was pulling for. It would have been the greatest, you know, TV movie if it had succeeded the way everybody hoped. But you had insight as to even how God turned all that for the good. Share that a little bit, if you would. Dr. Ming Wang (40:15) Yes, thank you. Thank you for your question, Andrea. There are two aspects of your question. First is how do we work? You know, what is the most important assignment that as a Christian that God has given us? And I have gradually understood that the most important chore, the task that God has given each of us as Christians is to help grow the kingdom. That is to not just celebrating our faith at the churches on Sundays, but more importantly, share our faith Monday through Fridays at the workplace. Now here’s the problem. Lots of people say, well, no, no, no, no way. There’s no common ground between Christian and non Christian. So there’s nothing, you know, in Sunday you have common ground with your fellow Christians, but not only through Friday, other people with different faith, religion or no faith at all. And I’ve been thinking about that question. You know, in my clinic I have a drawing that I was eye surgeons doing surgery, presumably to me and you know, doing surgeries. But Jesus Christ is standing behind me. His hand is on my shoulder. So what it does is to me is that yes, I need to do surgery. Dr. Ming Wang (41:33) I cannot be lazy. The science and technology, but the inspiration comes from Christ, okay? So he knows that God works through his miracle. Every surgery that I’ve been able to do, miracles from God, but God worked through his miracle through me. Okay? I’m the vessel, I’m the tool. Now. So regarding atheists and Christians, do we have common ground or not? That’s a big question. For example, atheists would not like me praying, right? So long time ago when I started doing surgeries and I was already Christian, I said, I’m gonna pray with all my patients. But then they say, no, no, no, don’t do that. I mean, if you pray, the non Christian patients will be offended and they will not come back for your eye surgeries. They will not be happy. So, oh, maybe I should not pray. So then I stopped praying to Christ. I said, what should I do? You know, the answer I got back is that and in many parts of scripture is that if it’s the right thing to do, there’s a price to pay. Christ has paid the ultimate price by dying for our sin at the cross. So my little praying little risk is nothing. Dr. Ming Wang (42:37) So I decide I’m going to pray. So then I’ve done 55,000 laser vision corrections surgeries now, including on over 4,000 doctors. Every single patient I’ve done in my career, I pray with my patient before surgery. Now here’s the thing. I’m a scientist. So I did a little research project over about two years, collected over about 200 some atheist patients that I knew that they were not Christians. And I conducted the research project. I want to find out how they feel. Is it true that they are offended? Is it true that indeed atheists and Christians do not have common ground? So all of these patients, every Single patient before surgery. They are lying on the surgery table ready for surgery. And I always go to their ears. I sit down and have a moment, just a quiet moment, just me and patient. Pray with them. Every single patient then. So the day after the surgery of these 200 some non Christian patients, I conduct a research project. I did a little survey. So I asked them that. Yesterday I prayed with you. Were you offended? I know that you are not Christian, that could you tell me, share with me, how do you feel? Dr. Ming Wang (43:48) And almost all of them told me this way. They said, Dr. Wang, yesterday I was very nervous under your laser, and you did come to my ear, very gentle saying, nancy is okay. I pray with you because I was told I’m supposed to be politically correct. I’m supposed to ask for permissions. So I always ask permissions. So I said, is it okay to pray with you? And the patient said, Nancy, honestly, Dr. Wang, I was so nervous underneath your laser, you’re about to do a surgery on me. I didn’t dare to say no to my surgeon. So I said, yeah, I kind of took advantage of the situation, but I took advantage for God. I felt okay. But my main question today is, were you offended when I pray? And all of them told me this way. And this stayed with me. This is my main point about science and faith and the Christian, non Christian, do they have common ground? Can we find common ground or not with non Christians? They all say this way. They say, Dr. Wang, I do not believe what you believe. I said, that’s why I asked you, were you offended though? Dr. Ming Wang (44:45) When I pray and they say, even I did not believe what you believe. But when you pray with me before my eye surgery yesterday, I was not only not offended, I was not only not offended, but I was actually moved. I said, how can you be moved when you don’t believe my cries that I believe? All of them said this way. They say, I was moved yesterday because in one of my most important moments in my life, which is my eye surgery, I don’t want to have anything to go wrong. You brought something that is most important to you. You’re Christ. And I appreciate that. So all of a sudden I realized it’s the love for fellow human being that transcends the boundaries our faith and religion is that ultimately, as Christians, what God wants us to do when we meet a non Christian is not preaching nor imposing, but express our love for another fellow human being through identifying that common ground. That love for fellow human being doesn’t matter whether they’re Christian or not. That is the best way. The founding Common ground is the best way to bring that person to Christ. Dr. Ming Wang (46:00) So I’ve been praying all my surgeries in my life and yes, you’re right. Regarding your second question, Andrea. One of the difficulties that I have after being Christian is I thought after being Christian, everything will be blue sky, you know, white cloud. My life will be perfect. No, in many ways my life is even more challenging because I have to follow the code of conduct as a Christian. And one the biggest challenge to me I’ve come to realize is that when we pray to God, if God does answer our prayer, that’s not that hard. But what if we pray to God as a Christian? You know, our loved one gets sick, we lost a job and we have this difficulty. Our kids have got into trouble. We pray to God. It seems that God did not answer. You know, our loved one still dies. So how can we still maintain faith and confidence and trust in him? An example you talk about in the film site. We brought this kid orphan from India and we did everything. I even developed amnio contact lens. And also we prayed before her Kajal surgery. She was intentionally blinded by her own stepmother who put sulfuric acid into her eyes. Dr. Ming Wang (47:15) Trying to make Kajal a blind orphan child who then sing on the streets, who would then get more money from tourists then Kujau. Afterwards, maliciously blinded, she was found to have no talent of singing. She couldn’t sing. That’s why she was abandoned. And that’s why we found her in a train station near Calcutta, India. Almost died from starvation and the blind and sight. The movie is about Kujol’s remarkable journey trying to come from darkness to sight. So we brought her here. I found three host families to take care of her. And then we are getting ready, we’re doing surgery. I got a whole team to pray. Whether you’re atheist or believer, I want the whole team to pray for Kajal. And we did. And the surgery completely failed. I realized that the stepmother who put sulfuric acid into her eyes that kept the eye open allowed the acid to corrode through the last layer of the eye. So I have zero chance to restore Kajal’s eyesight. The thing is, you saw in the film was true that I step out of the operating room and there was reporters. Tennessee reporter, you’re right. If it was successful, they’ll be reporting that. Dr. Ming Wang (48:20) But they already did stamp a picture of me and see me soaked, trenched in the operating gown, the scrub. And I did not want to talk to any reporter. I just ran away because I was so mad that surgery failed. And for months after, every day people come say, hey, Kajal, see or not? These three host families, we find it naturally they took care of Kajal. And they asked me for answer. And then I looked behind me that nobody answered my question. And not only I was mad at the stepmother who poured sulfuric acid into such a high poisonous little child to maliciously blind her for money, but also I was angry at my own God because I didn’t understand that as a Christian, why number one God would allow such an evil happen. You know, such a suffering happened in such a helpless child, five year old blind orphan. But also why we did the right thing. We got the technology, we prayed and we did everything. Why God did not answer our prayer? I was thinking that God, if you just leave a little piece of tissue. I’ve done some very difficult reconstructive surgeries. Dr. Ming Wang (49:24) I may have a chance to restore, maybe partial, a bit of vision for sight, but for Kajal. But no, the entire eye was destroyed. No chance. So my foundation Christian faith is fundamentally shaken. Because I think I said to myself, if a guy, you don’t answer our prayer, don’t listen to me, don’t care why I need to become a Christian. So for months I was in a deep trench. Not only medically, but also more important, my faith was shaken. And then every year our foundation has an event to raise money called the Eyeball. Because I had to learn dancing during Cultural Revolution escape labor camp. Now I use the dancing skill to combined with medical charity. I created the concept called the eyeball. You come to eyeball, you see the beautiful dancing. But it reminds you how precious our eyesight is as human being and how much we need to help those who have lost sight. So at every eyeball we always feature the patient’s foundation being able to help their ear. So that year was Kajal. So 500 eyeball attendees in a big ballroom in Nashville Hilton hotel. And then on stage, three host families, they were telling everybody how they took care of Kajal. Dr. Ming Wang (50:34) And then their kids, they stood, come to the microphone and told everybody how they play with Kajal and how they took care of the five year old who couldn’t speak English and come to America. One 11 year old boy at the microphone said something that truly impacted me. Me. And Kajal was standing on the side listening on the stage. And he said Kajol couldn’t see, but we played hide and seek with her all the time. But even though she couldn’t see, she always was able to Find us wherever we hid. And she started smiling, running around, having good time, learning English. So the 11 year old boy turned around, looked at his father behind him. He said, daddy, Kujo is happy. She had nothing. Daddy, I don’t need my ipod anymore. And those were days of the ipod. So standing on the side, listening to that, the 11 year old boy testimonial. All of a sudden a new understanding emerged in me. I realized that perhaps God did answer our prayer. That even though none of us wants to see such a tragedy happen to such a helpless precious child, but God maybe is using Kajal’s suffering to impact people around, cajole these kids, to make them appreciate what they have in life. Dr. Ming Wang (51:56) So in other words, Kajal has shown us, even when no light is coming from outside, light could emanate from within. If one has Christ, one has love in one’s heart. So God may have answered my prayer already, but not in the way I wanted, in the timing I wanted. Maybe God will answer, but only in his way at his time. So realizing that the bigger picture, the bigger plan, the positive impact that Kajal’s life has impacted other people’s lives and Kajal has been able to move on and develop new purpose for her life. So what I’m trying to say is I understand God did answer my prayer. So my anger towards my own God kind of starts subsiding. Then the three host family walk off the stage. Me and Kajal came up to the microphone and I give her a little. I give her the microphone. I said, Kajal, there are 500 AIBO attendees right now. We all love you so much, but you can’t see them. We all can see you. Can you say something maybe in English? So I gave her the microphone. But surprising to me that Kajal broke into a little mischievous little smile. Dr. Ming Wang (53:01) She had a little secret she did not tell me. You remember she was intentionally blinded back in India. Because they were trying to make her blind orphan child who then sing on the street, who would get more money from tourists. But then Kajols wanted to have no talent on the scene. That’s why she was abandoned in the train station. Foundation found her, brought her to America. So in her five year old mind, after she eventually camped along thousands, tens of thousands of miles, came to America and found freedom. What Kajol want the Most as a 5 year old is not to see. She wants more than she wants to see. She wants to be able to learn to sing. Because she wants to prove to all the adults that she could sing. So she therefore should not be abandoned. She’s worth saving. So she, Keqiao lived with these three host families, with these kids every day playing. She learned from these kids, American kids, how to sing. So at that moment on eyeball stage, 500 eyeballs, you know, got ball gowns and tails. Beautiful. We’re looking at on the stage, Kajal. I gave her the microphone. Dr. Ming Wang (54:09) She broke into a mischievous little smile. Keqiang said, Dr. Wang, I want to sing. I was surprised. I said, really? You can sing? You want to sing? She said, yes. So in front of all 500 abort attendees, many of us have tears in our eyes. Look at this precious little thing, the unspeakable suffering. But yet God has helped her find a way to overcome that move on life. But not only that, her suffering has so positively impacted the other kids life around her, make them appreciate what they have in America today so much more. Kijal sang a song that she picked herself in front of those 500 eyeball attendees. And that song she sang holding that little microphone, that picture, that picture that Kajal was saying at the eyeball appeared by Reuters, reported by Reuters and appeared in newspaper in about 70 some countries in the Thanksgiving time that year. The song that she picked herself and sang in front of 500 IBOG attendees was Jesus loves Me. So right then, many of us are in tears watching her singing. And then the band started. Kajoya and I came on the stage just like in the wedding, father and daughter. Dr. Ming Wang (55:20) Kajoy and I did the first dance. Andrea Schwartz (55:23) Wow, that’s great. Dr. Ming Wang (55:25) So God does answer our prayer as Christians that when we think that our prayer is not answered, it’s actually the biggest test of our strength as Christians is when we pray it seemingly that God is not answering, but realizing the deeper understanding that God will answer. God is faithful. He will answer our prayer, but only in his way. Andrea Schwartz (55:55) Yes. Dr. Ming Wang (55:55) At his time. Andrea Schwartz (55:56) Yes. Well, thank you for that. That was really telling. Again, the movie didn’t have her sing it in the movie, but I was glad that I read it in the book. So a couple of things. This wasn’t. Well, maybe it was mentioned in the book. I think I can’t remember, but I looked for it. You have a pen pal sort of process where people in America converse with others in China. Talk a little bit about that. Dr. Ming Wang (56:22) Yes. Today China is economically technology developed rapidly, but it is a looming crisis that is, you know, with material development without faith. What happened? Corruption. Right. Because people don’t have moral ethical standard behavior. So China has wonderful economic development, technology development. But China needs Christ more than Ever. And there’s only 5%, actually less than 5% Chinese are Christians. Essentially it’s an atheist country, right? So I realized that God has impacted my life. I come to America, I found not only freedom, just like the character in the God’s Dead movie, the Chinese Student, which is inspired by my life story. As I mentioned that I also more important find faith in Christ. So give me a purpose what I’m going to use my science technology for in this case, to help my blind orphan children, patients. So I want the Chinese, the 1.4 billion people at the time when there’s more material development, the wealth development, temptation to realize that you need Christ more so that you can stem the corruption, but also help the next generation to combine science and technology to have more purpose driven life. So I realized that we need to do something about it. Dr. Ming Wang (57:51) And specifically we need to bring Bible to China. Now I work with Lifeway Christian books and translate the Bible into modern young people used Chinese language. Okay, the modern Chinese different from 50 years ago, 100 years ago. And my English language is different. Right. Today, you know, we have word attachment. You know, 50 years ago attachment is attachment, emotional attachment maybe. But today when you say attachment, it means a computer attachment, right? So words change meaning. So the Christian faith can be, can grow in China if we can translate the Bible into the modern Chinese language, not, you know, older ones, 50, 100 years ago. So I work with Lifeway and we translate Chinese into modern Chinese the young people use today. And then here’s the most challenging aspect is we have to bring the Bible to China. But that the legal, the law only allowed two copies, only two copies. And so I have a pen pal project that people I found the Christians in China, number one, develop pen pal relationship in email. Because website can be censored, but not email. Hey, that’s a little loophole. So we’re taking advantage of that. So you know they communicate right with the Chinese Christians. Dr. Ming Wang (59:09) And there’s some rules, there’s safeguard, you have to be careful, you know, you don’t want to get the Chinese Christians into trouble and stuff. But we follow these rules and basically talk about Christ without critiquing the government. That’s the way to do it. And then these pen pals, American pen pals will bring Bible to China. And we tell everybody the risk. You can only bring two copies. And more than that you can get into trouble. And many of them actually took risks bring more than that. Every time I go back, I bring back two suitcases of Bible, the newly translated one One time I almost got in trouble at the Shanghai airport. The custom person wants to open my suitcase. Oops, I could be in big trouble. Not only I could be detained, but what if I’m detained? All my patients in America, they lose their eye doctor and not just for my family, but all my patients. So I was very nervous. I look at the two suitcases. He said, I’m going to open it. What’s in there? I said, books. He said, what kind of books? I said, good books. But he’s still going to open. Dr. Ming Wang (01:00:16) He’s still going to open. And I said, oh, I’m way surpassed the two book requirements, the restriction and I’m going to be detained forever. And so I was sweating and I was standing at the custom in the line there and you know, in front of the station and I was closing my eyes and stopped praying. I said, God, please stop him, please stop him. Don’t let him open the suitcase. Don’t let him open. As I’m open, praying, praying. Then I open my eyes, something shocking happened right in front of me. He didn’t open the two suitcases. He kind of stood up, there’s two suitcases and put in the belt conveying belt and let it roll through the machine. I said, what happened? A moment ago before I closed my eyes in my prayer, he was going to open my suitcase and now I have to open my eyes. He actually just put his suitcase vertical and just let it go through the conveyal belt. And I realized something. That was because all of a sudden behind me, seeming out of nowhere, there are like 50 people standing in the line. So what happened? As I was praying, there’s a newly new plane deplaned. Dr. Ming Wang (01:01:27) Bunch of people just came out of the gate there and just stood behind me. So this guy realized that all of a sudden if he has opened my trunk, he would hold him up, you know, or hold the line. So he decided not to open my suitcase because all the people showing up behind me. So in a way I think God answered my prayer. But interesting in a different way, right? So it’s the China Bible Project. The goal is to for world’s most populous nation at the time of scientific rapid development, economic development, where people need more Christ, not less. Let them hear the good news, let them have an opportunity because many of them don’t know, don’t know Christ. Let them have the opportunity to know their Savior. Andrea Schwartz (01:02:13) So how would people who are interested find out more about it and how. Dr. Ming Wang (01:02:17) To get involved for Americans here, Email me. Our foundation address is wang foundation.com wang foundation.com you email. You say, my email address is in there. Just say, Dr. Wang, I’m interested. Become a pen pal and I will put you on the list. And we when we identify a Chinese person, typical atheist, who is interested in communicating with American Christian pen pal and we will then pass that information to you and you can start communicating. But I’ll give you guidelines. You know, I don’t want that person in China getting into trouble. But there are lots of things we can do. Number one, email is not censored. Okay. Website is right. Emails. Okay, good. But there’s a certain guidelines. It basically kind of to bring that person have an opportunity to. In America, we have taken our freedom for granted. You know, sometimes on Sunday people say, oh, I don’t want to go to church, I’m going to sleep in. In China, people cannot freely go to churches. You know, in many other countries, right. They don’t have the ability, the freedom to worship. Here we have the freedom. We don’t appreciate. Andrea Schwartz (01:03:30) We’re coming to the close. I promised you I would limit this and we’re getting close to that time, but you sort of just hinted at it. I’d like you to conclude, if you would, about your true appreciation for America. You know, there’s so many people who were born here who like you said, don’t know anything different. And we hear a lot today about how America is terrible and this and that. But you know what? Even though you experience in the book chronicles this discrimination because you didn’t look like everybody else, you have this sense that America is important. So much so that you wanted to become a citizen. If you would tell us about that perspective and what you’d have to say to people who never knew anything different. Dr. Ming Wang (01:04:20) Thank you for the question, Andrea. People say, ask me what’s the purpose of your book? From doctrines to site and what is the purpose of the film site? By the way, a site is distributed by Angel Studios at Angel.com, a wonderful Christian distribution company distributed The Chosen the Bible story, Sound of Freedom, now Angel Studios distributing site so they say, what is the purpose of the book and the movie for America today? So my answer is this. Here’s the message. The site we’re trying to send Suicide the movie to America and book From Darkness to Sight. You know who appreciates vision sight the most? Those who used to be blind. Who appreciates freedom the most? Those who used to not have freedom sight. And the book From Darkness to Sight is about someone who used to not have freedom who come to share with all of us here in America today who always have had freedom, how precious freedom is, how precious the ability to worship freely the faith is. And then the people say, you mean we don’t appreciate enough America, what we have? I say, correct. And they say, why? Well, why do you say that? Dr. Ming Wang (01:05:40) What’s the evidence of our lack of appreciation of America? I said, the evidence is in our unprecedented polarization and division. We’re increasing unable to work across political aisles, racial divides and ethnic divisions. We’re increasingly fixated as fellow Americans on the differences rather than appreciating what we all have in common. And we’re increasingly unable to solve the problems we’re facing in the society. You know, gun violence, opioid crisis, environmental disaster, racial tension, education, poverty, healthcare, jobs. And we need to restore America to its foundation, which is a nation built upon two bedrocks. One is the Constitution, one is the Bible. So that’s what America is all about. That’s why America attract people from around the world. Because these two cornerstones, we cannot forget that. And these are the two common ground we all share. So I would say the destruction, some of the people that burn down houses and burn down the buildings and you know, causing destruction, I just want to get down and shout at them. I said, don’t you know how good we have got here? Yes, we don’t have a perfect country. Granted we have lots of problems as I mentioned, all these problems, racial tension, economic challenges, poverty and all that. Dr. Ming Wang (01:06:59) But compared with the rest of the world, we have the best nation because the blessing of Jesus Christ. So we need to truly as Americans to appreciate this country but not just saying it, but by doing it, but being more willing to work together for the sake of the nation to restore America across racial divided ethnic divisions. So for all of us, especially for all Christians, doesn’t matter. You’re white, Asian, black, Latin Americans, African Americans, we all have the ultimate common ground which is Jesus Christ. Andrea Schwartz (01:07:33) Amen. Well doctor, thank you again for joining me. Give the name of the website again and where can people get your book? Dr. Ming Wang (01:07:43) Wangfoundation.com and they can click little donate $25 at proceeds go to foundation so we can help more blind orphan children. And we will smell a book signed by me and especially share with young people who are studying science and technology in universities to tell them that you need the science but you need more Christ today. And also to watch the film site distributed by Angel Studios. It’s at Angel.com Very good. Andrea Schwartz (01:08:14) Outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com is how you reach me and we look forward to talking with you next time. (01:08:22) Thanks for listening to out of the Question. (01:08:24) For more information on this and other topics, please visit chalcedon.edu.…

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331: Are Christians Ready for the Age of AI? 46:43

5 weeks ago46:43

46:43

This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . Charles Roberts (00:02) 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 co-hosts are Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor, and Pastor Charles Roberts. Andrea Schwartz (00:19) You often hear about the desire for authenticity or transparency in terms of relationships among people. While there are aspects of life where something artificial is acceptable, it is also usually very obvious. Artificial flowers may look authentic, but up close, you’re able to discern they are not. The same goes for artificial fingernails, eyelashes, artificial turf that looks somewhat like grass, but it isn’t. There are countless other examples. However, sometimes what is artificial is less ideas. Many times, women augment certain parts of their anatomy, but those who look at them might not readily realize that there is literally less to them than meets the eye. So it is safe to say that something artificial can sometimes approximate a deception or a fraud. Today, Charles and I are going to discuss a book that was released this year, 2025, by Andrew Torba, entitled Reclaiming claiming reality, restoring humanity in the age of AI. Ai, if you’re not familiar with the term, means Artificial Intelligence, and signifies that a particular result, whether it’s text, graphics, photographs, have been produced using computer algorithms and machine learning methods. Very often, the results come quite close to approximating something that came from human performance, but it’s not always detectable. Andrea Schwartz (02:02) Charles, is AI something new or is it just gaining more awareness and acceptance? How does Torba’s book help answer the question, Does this technology honor God? Charles Roberts (02:17) In some ways it’s new, but in other ways it’s not. Technological advances have been around for millennia. When you go from fashioning weapons out of one type of material and somebody comes up with fashioning a weapon out of something totally different and more enduring and heavier than you’ve made a technological advance in the area of fighting and warfare. And that goes back, as I said, millennia. All of our things are dressed up in technological language and technological dressing. So it looks very scientific and advanced. And most of us, of a certain age, and even younger people, they’ve grown up with the Hollywood vision about the future, with spaceships and computers. Everybody he remembers Star Trek and the computer program that was on all the starship, and you could talk to it and all that. So that’s a template that many people have in their heads. And so when something like this starts to be available, it looks very advanced and makes us look like very smart people. On the other hand, I think Torba’s book makes some important points about what Christians need to be thinking about concerning this. And I think our listeners need to understand that this is really a very good book in many ways, and he puts forth some extremely important arguments that this is not something that we brush aside as just crazy atheists, humanists only would be interested in this. Charles Roberts (03:45) His position is Christians ought to be out in the forefront of being involved with this and creating types of artificial intelligence programs that honor God, and that in and of itself, like an automobile. Does an automobile honor or dishonor God? Well, it’s just something man has made, it can be used for good or ill. I think his position is, it’s the same with artificial intelligence. Andrea Schwartz (04:08) I remember a book way back entitled The Future and its Enemies by Virginia Pastreil. It’s good to think about it because there’s often a reticence for something new, especially for older people who aren’t used to it. My husband’s uncle had the first car dealership in New Jersey, and people thought was crazy for investing in that because nothing was ever going to replace the horse and buggy. Well, I’m about you, but I don’t see too many horse and buggies around right now. The same is true with everybody had a typewriter, and then we went to computers, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a typewriter now and on and on. Now, sometimes you don’t even need a keyboard to input something. It seems to be that the younger generation embraces technology much faster than their parents or grandparents, and a lot of that has to do with familiarity. When you say Christians ought to look at this, there is an effort to differentiate between technological advancement and potential tyranny. Charles Roberts (05:19) Yeah, and as I was thinking through what you just said about that and the whole project of discussing this, I was reminded of a chapter in a book that I read in college by the Existential philosopher Gabriel Marcell, who, unlike Sartre and Heidegger, was a devout Roman Catholic Christian. People can quibble about whether you could be a full-blown existentialist philosopher and a devout Roman Catholic Christian, but he claimed that he was. Anyway, in his book, Man Against Mass Society, he had a chapter. Now, this was written, I think in the early ’50s, late ’40s, somewhere in that time frame, called Technological Progress and Sin. And that title really jumped out at me when I first saw it back in the ’70s, when I read it, I was like, wow, what’s the story there? And the gist of what he was arguing is that when technology reaches the level of where you can create weapons of what we today, weapons of mass destruction, and of course, in his day, it was the atomic bomb that can violate an entire nation of people in a flash, then you’ve crossed a boundary. And there needs to be some, if not theological, philosophical break on doing things that really do cross into sinful type activity and thinking. Charles Roberts (06:37) I think that can be applied in other areas, like in what we are talking about. And this is something that, as I mentioned, with the films and the movies has been played with for a long time. And one of the more recent examples of that, that I think borders on a technology becoming sinful, is a movie that was out a few years ago, I think it was called Her, H-E-R, and it started Wakeem Phoenix. And this guy falls in love with the voice of his artificial intelligence that’s on his phone. So this predates what we understand as AI today. I mean, people were talking about artificial intelligence for a long time. I saw the movie because the whole subject intrigued me, and I thought, Nobody can pull this off. How could you fall in love with a voice on a phone? But it looked pretty realistic as far as the emotional attachment that this guy had. So I think once we cross into that, then from the biblical standpoint, which is the only true standpoint, we’ve really crossed a boundary where we’ve replaced genuine human relationships, which is what God has ordained for his creation, with something that is a total distortion of it. Andrea Schwartz (07:48) And I actually think it goes one step further. Sometimes you are actually experiencing things that were generated by artificial intelligence intelligence or computer algorithms and such, and you don’t even know it. But I remember, I don’t know what, the ’80s, ’90s, I forget, when the movie Forest Gum came out. People loved that movie. It bothered me so dramatically because I knew Tom Hanks, the actor who played Forrest Gump, had never shaken hands with Nikita Khrushchev or Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, whatever he did. It bothered me Because at the time, now, I think if you look back on it, you can see the limitations of the technology unless they’ve remastered it. But I knew that if people saw something, then they would likely believe it because I saw it with my own eyes. I remember being so distressed after watching that, realizing that with enough skill, you could put anybody, any place, and say that person was there when, of course, that person was not there. I think we’ve already been manipulated into thinking that if we see it, if we hear it, if we read it, it must be true. One of the things I was talking to my grandson, who at 18 years old, he’s of the younger generation. Andrea Schwartz (09:15) I asked him, What do you think about AI? And his answer was, I have a very nuanced opinion of AI. He liked what it could do, but he saw with his contemporaries that they were losing the ability to think critically because they were more than willing to digest whatever came up in terms of a search or in terms of a particular topic. So he wasn’t all that thrilled, but he also was communicating that there are some things that are advantageous that the use of this artificial intelligence could help people do. Charles Roberts (09:55) That raises an interesting point that applies in a variety of areas in our culture. In this particular instance, we are talking about, in its present form, a new fascinating type of technology that it’s like the microwave oven and the cell phone. We have many, many people alive today who did not know a time where there was not a cell phone and a microwave oven. So it’s a common thing. Many of us can remember a day when people actually gave turn signals before Well, they turned right or left. But once you cross this boundary into a time where all of that is gone and nobody has, whether maybe ancestral memory is too strong a term, but a memory of a common cultural practice or understanding of how life is, it won’t seem so crazy or revolutionary or inhuman. And I was thinking about this, too. I remember just before the whole COVID business started up, I think it was around 2017, 2018, somewhere in there. There was something that was making quite a bit of news, at least in some circles. And I mean, you’d see this on network news, maybe not in explicit terms, but it was the production and the interest that people had in producing sex robots. Charles Roberts (11:19) And all of a sudden, like in 2017, 2018, I get lit up to about the time of the COVID stuff. That whole thing just disappeared because there were people who were investing big money in this. And I hadn’t heard that much about any of that lately. So I went online just before we started our podcast, and I was looking this up, and I came across a statement here made by a woman who had written a book on this subject. And I want to quote what she says here in terms of people buying and using sex robots. She says, It’s about intimacy and technology, computers and psychology. It’s about history and archeology, love and biology. It’s about the future, both near and distant, science fiction utopias and dystopias, loneliness and companionship, law and ethics, privacy and community. Most of all, it’s about being human in a world of machines. That was her quote. So I think the same thing applies here with AI, and that it’s about being able to come to an awareness of knowledge of things and having access to that knowledge in a convenient form, but also recognizing that this can also be a great threat in terms of what genuine knowledge is, and something we’ve talked about before. Charles Roberts (12:36) A lot of people talk about this. There’s a difference between wisdom and having access to facts and figures. I think that’s where the line gets to be drawn. Andrea Schwartz (12:45) When technology outpaces ethics and the examination of it, Oh, wow, a car that will drive itself. When I first heard about the self-driving cars, I was pretty sure that lawyers had pushed for this because I could just imagine the lawsuits that come about with the absence of a driver taking a car around. But there always is going to be some ethics. The question is, what ethics? As the modern American church, and I would say maybe in terms of worldwide as well, as the church has become more and more antinomian and not looking at God’s law as how it pertains to particular situation. That makes it so that there’s all sorts of practices, starting with abortion, going with euthanasia. Then we have organ transplantation and in vitro fertilization. If religious and by that I mean Christian biblical ethics, aren’t applied, then it seems as though anybody who says no to such things is just against progress and that they become pushed to the back as you’re just an old fuddy-duddy. But the truth is that when people, for example, you brought up the question of automobiles, there are certain things that an automobile allowed people to do for good or bad that the horse and buggy couldn’t do because in terms of range and exposure to the elements. Andrea Schwartz (14:21) So there always has to be the template of how does this conform to God’s law? But of course, if you’re not taught the law, or if you’re taught that the law no longer applies, then I think you’re really a sitting duck. Charles Roberts (14:36) Yeah, Torba addresses this in a number of places in the book. And on page 108 of the book, he talks about, and I’m just going to quote him here, The path forward is neither Ludditeism, a Luddite is somebody who doesn’t want any progress anymore. Everything should just stay the same or go backwards, more or less. So the choice is neither that nor capitulation, but dominion through discernment. And he points out early Christians transformed the Roman Empire by creating a vibrant subculture that outlived, outloved, and out hoped the collapsing world around them. And then he says, Today’s believers must similarly innovate, coding AI that rejects data exploitation, launching social media platforms, resistant to censorship, designing neural interfaces that enhance human agency rather than erode it. And he goes on from there. So that’s an example of both how he sees Christians have been progressive in the best sense of the term, at different points in our history, and that we are at a unique crossroads with this, where we dare not just simply throw our hands up and say, this is the devil’s playground, and we can’t have anything to do with it. And we’ve seen this across the board with other aspects of our culture. Charles Roberts (15:45) And this is why Dr. Rastuni’s teachings have been so profoundly important for people who want to follow and believe the Bible is the infallible, inherent, absolute, total word of God, because it applies to every area of life. And we don’t just sit by and let the devil’s people run everything. I mean, that’s what’s been happening over the past 200 or 300 years, at least in the United States. Because of bad theology, Christians have been in retreat. And thank goodness there have been some, like Steoney and others who have said, no, we need to be on the forefront and reclaim all of this for Christ in his kingdom. Andrea Schwartz (16:23) So I was thinking the whole concept that there’s nothing new under the sun. Charles Roberts (16:28) Right. Andrea Schwartz (16:29) So The sin in the garden was Adam and Eve deciding that they really didn’t need to conform to God’s law, to God’s mandates as creatures in terms of God being the creator, that they were going to determine that for themselves. A lot of our arguments in terms of why certain things are wrong, be it abortion, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, is that the image of God in man is to all men, whether we like them or not, the image of God is there. Well, when we move to computers, then to me, it seemed like the image of man’s view of himself given over to the machine that he programs the machine, and so he’s going to be the God of this. We’ve already experienced it, whether we know it or not. Just put in a Google search and you start typing something, and then all of a All of a sudden, something else comes up and finishes your sentence. Well, during the 2020 election, apparently, you put in certain things, and even if you were looking for something in particular about a person, that result wouldn’t come up. You would have to be pretty determined to find something. Andrea Schwartz (17:51) A lot of the information that comes in these searches, in these algorithms, are curated by people who more than likely don’t all share the same world and life view, except maybe the humanistic view is what’s predominant. I think that’s what Torba is talking about, using the technology, but recognizing it, it’s only going to be as good as the worldview that inputs into it. Charles Roberts (18:21) People need to realize that this distinction or conflict between, say, typing in something into a Google search it finishes it for you in a way that it wants you to have or doesn’t want you to have. I mean, that’s an example of how there is a source of knowledge and authority, and it is thoroughly humanistic. But you don’t escape that. In the long run, there are only two choices. It’s God’s law word or man’s word. One of them is divine, and it is perfect. The other is corrupted and leads inevitably to destruction and tyranny. And that’s an example, the type of censorship that goes on. But from the very beginning, and Torbert talks about this, and you just alluded to it in the early part of the book about how this goes back to the question of knowledge and man’s word over against God’s word in the Garden of Eden. You don’t escape ethics. You don’t escape the responsibility, morally, for knowledge and belief. These are not neutral realms. Knowledge is either they’re God honoring and recognizing that the source of all truth and all reality is what God’s word says in Holy scripture, versus what any and everything else is. Charles Roberts (19:40) You have to have a point of embarkcation. You’ve got to start somewhere with something in terms of building a worldview, in terms of building a philosophy of life, in terms of, well, thinking about medicine, for example. That’s a big topic for everybody. What is the starting point about what makes people well and whole? What exactly is a human being? There are a variety of answers to these if you’re going to step away from God’s word, the Bible. But in terms of what God says, it is given to us in scripture, and this is the starting point, and this is the place we go forward from what his law word tells us. And again, it’s not a question of being backwards and backward versus progress and shiny new metallic things and that thinking. It is a of what is the source of all knowledge? And if your source of knowledge is claimed to be something other than God’s word, how can you justify it? And can you prove and give people some assurance that the future of that type of knowledge and the society and the culture that you will build on it doesn’t lead to anihilation, death camps or soylent green. Andrea Schwartz (20:53) In my preparation for this, I started just going for definitions of words: artificial, authentic, real, fake, in terms of what do we actually mean? How do we determine what’s real? If we have an artificial intelligence, then what would real intelligence be? Then I was just reading through Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where he tells them to think on what things are true, what things are pure, what things are right. That goes to what you said. If we don’t have a standard to judge that, then maybe, for example, having weaponry that drones can go out and kill people indiscriminately because somebody said to do so. I mean, do people who manage those drones, do they have any ethical responsibility as to the death of image bearers of God? Or have we gotten so into being so, quote, unquote, knowledgeable about everything that’s going on when we really know very little, because a lot of what’s presented to us on media, social media, in a lot of ways ends up being theater than truth. Charles Roberts (22:16) Yeah, and it goes back to the issue of, in spite of the appearance of technological progress, of advancement in science or knowledge or whatever, the one thing that has ever changed and will not change apart from God’s divine intervention is the corrupt fallen nature of man. And that’s why you can have technological progress that turns into and is sinful. From a purely philosophical, theological standpoint, if a person does something that’s good, but they’re not doing it for God’s glory, if they’re a rank atheist and deny God, then in the larger metaphysical sense, it’s not good what they’re doing, because they’re it purely for the glory of humanity, and they’re not honoring God in their action. And I think we have the same issue going here with the idea that we can create something that’s greater than anything that’s ever been seen before. It’s hard for us, given the cultural distance, to try to imagine what it would have been like to enter some of the great cities of ancient Egypt in all their grandeour, or Rome. You get some smattering of this, perhaps, in motion pictures that try to be realistic in their portrayal of these things. Charles Roberts (23:32) But just from the artifacts that we have left over, the archeological remains of something like the pyramids or the Sphinx, or something like that, it’s hard to imagine what ancient people would have thought of these massive structures that were built by human hands to glorify man. Well, they may be shiny objects, as I said before today, and they may come with an artificially contrived human-sounding voice, but the motivations are the They haven’t changed, and they eventually lead to the same place, which, again, as I said, is a sad dystopian, the loss of all of what it means to be human. And if people don’t know what it means to be human anymore, then they won’t keep a grasp on it. The only way they can know what it means to be human is by following what God’s law says. Andrea Schwartz (24:22) You mentioned the innovations of the microwave and the cell phone. Of course, the microwave, look at how much time it saves and how quickly it prepares your food or the cell phone. Now you can be in touch with anybody at any time, as long as you know their number or they know yours. But there are also some negatives associated with both of them in terms of radiation and proximity to the human body. I imagine that there was some really significant and sophisticated building techniques that were implemented in the Tower of Babel. I mean, I imagine it was like, wow, we can do this with that. We can cut the time in half or whatever, never realizing that God was going to thwart the effort. I think that rather than being afraid of the tyrannical one-world government who are trying to replace humans with machines, and we can get into a discussion of transhumanism here in a second, but is that as a consistent believer, we must say that God will only allow things to goes so far before he judges it. And then what are we supposed to do as the people of God? We’re to be faithful in the midst, have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness, but to expose them. Andrea Schwartz (25:43) And so there’s the line between using technology for the glory of God, which you and I are using right now. You’re in South Carolina, I’m in California. We’re having a conversation that we’ll be able to share with people. Technology has a lot to do with this. It would be impossible without it, but to how to use the technology for God’s glory and never outpacing an examination with the word of God. Charles Roberts (26:10) Yeah, it’s interesting with the development of personal computers and hand Intel devices that pack more power than some of the computers we used 30 years ago. Many people perhaps don’t realize it, but Christians have been on the forefront of, if not manufacturing some of these things, but the software in particular, Bible software programs have been huge sellers and sources of income for people who market computer software. And there may be a few people around today, I’m not one of them, who handwrite their sermons or their Bible studies, and they use a strong concordance, and they surround themselves on the floor with 100 different books. Most people don’t do that anymore. They pull up the Bible software program, and in a flash, you can pull up Romans 8, and Genesis 3, and all the rest of it. And that really is a great blessing, a great help. But I think that’s an example of how Christians can use this type of technology to the advancement and the glory of God. Like the Chalcedon website, for example. That’s an astounding portal of information, not only of Dr. Rushdoony’s writings, but the current people who write and work for Chalcedon, other types of things, audio, video. Charles Roberts (27:27) So that’s only one of many, many of those types of resources, mission organizations that spread the gospel all over the Earth. They use this type of technology. So it’s something that I think this is one of the thrusts of Torba’s book. This is important material. This is an important technology. And we, of all people, Christians, ought to be on the forefront of using it for God’s glory. Andrea Schwartz (27:55) And I don’t disagree with you. You know that. But what happens when the electricity goes off? What happens when you can’t exactly remember where on your device to find things? I mean, your house probably has bookshelves. My house has bookshelves, lots of books on them. I’ve actually shared and given away a number of them. But the question becomes, what gets lost? I remember hearing that until Christopher Columbus, everybody thought, if he sailed one way, he would fall off. I think it was Dr. Rushdoony who pointed out that there were many people who understood what the world looked like and that, no, they weren’t going to fall off. But because when the printing press came into resistance, only so much got transferred into print from scrolls that had been kept as archives and records. There’s a tendency for every generation to think, We know everything there is to know. But as I think you pointed out earlier on, you put in a search and the results you get, the conclusion is, I guess that’s all there is. But there’s more that maybe hasn’t paid to be on the first page of a search, or maybe some things never actually were digitized. Andrea Schwartz (29:19) So the question becomes, is everything we have that’s digital the only information that ever existed? Just like some got lost when we went scrolls to the printing press. Some also got lost when we went from paper or printed material to digital. So it’s important, and not everybody’s called for this, but to preserve the past, because sometimes you’re going to discover the answer to a problem has already been thought through but never made it onto the new platform. Charles Roberts (29:52) Yeah. And I think once we reach the point in the population where there aren’t any people with book shelves in their and there are a majority of people whose interaction with writing and literature and printed material is on their phone or on their tablet, and the power goes out, like you said, that’s going to create a real interesting scenario. But even if the power never goes out, there are enough of us alive today who do still use real, quote, material, like books and magazines, and we write things out, rather than entering into into an app on our phones. But some of that, I think, is unavoidable on the part of people who have bought into the worldview that what the Lord has created for us is not something that he has any sovereignty over. It’s completely up to us to reshape everything. And people are very ingenious. If they get to a point where everything relies on electricity or some form of power, well, they’re going to come up with some means of at least making a good stab at at keeping it going. Andrea Schwartz (31:01) I remember the whole idea of how you had to learn your basic arithmetic facts, and yes, once you learn them, that’s how I was with my kids, then you could use a calculator. You had to know how to do it, but to speed it up. I remember having a perfect example. One of my children was with me. We went to the post office, and the person had to consider how to make change by inputting something into the computer, and she was lost. I knew, You owe me 31 sense. She’s, No, I have to do it this way. We waited and we waited. In other words, my child could do it in his head, but this person had so relied on it. Who knows if this person ever knew how to do it in the first So there’s a lot of skills that are lost when you don’t learn the foundation or the fundamentals. I know people right now who actually find it hard, Charles, to read material on a piece of paper. Charles Roberts (32:00) Yeah. Andrea Schwartz (32:01) Who ever thought there’d be a time where you’d be at a church where you heard, open your Bibles or find on your phone and then give a Bible reference? Charles Roberts (32:12) My wife works at a Christian school where she is the Librarian. When she started working at this school, the library was not very big and not very well organized. She pretty much put the whole thing together and gave it a really good form and has made sure that it’s stocked with very good printed material. But where I’m going with this, and what was interesting, when she was in that process, she was seeking input from other Christian schools in the area and around the country that she was aware of. And there was one school in particular, a Christian, I think they were, junior high and high school, a pretty big Christian high school in junior high school. They were getting rid of all of their upper school books, I believe it was, because they were making everything digital, everything everything was going into E-Format for that particular class and age level. So they weren’t going to keep a library of hardbound and paperback books anymore. And there are, I think, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in university, but I think a lot of the textbooks now are in digital format. And this is another thing that we maybe have alluded to before, but there’s one particular manufacturer of electronic books where you buy this from them and people think, Well, that’s mine. Charles Roberts (33:31) I can read it on my device. But technically, you’re just leasing it from the person or the company you bought it from. And the fact that they have absolute authority over your supposed property was borne out how Was it maybe five, six, seven, 10 years ago? They just overnight went into people’s, electronically people’s devices and removed a particular book, even if you paid for it. I think maybe they gave you a refund. So there are some interesting problems problems associated with technology like this. And I mentioned to you earlier that in preparing for this, I was experimenting with a couple of different artificial intelligence platforms. And you can see where you go to the one we’re talking about Andrew Torba in his book. I mean, his company, Gab, his social media, they have their own version of artificial intelligence. And you can enter a term like, say, theonomy into that, and then you go to some of the other big well-known ones and you enter the same term, you are going to get dramatically different answers or explanations as to what that means. You could put in something, some politician’s name or some great historical figure, and you’ll see an example of that. Charles Roberts (34:43) What is the truth? What is the real answer or the real portrayal of this particular topic or issue? Andrea Schwartz (34:49) I think you see that played out, at least I do, when you venture into the world of having a political discussion with someone. It becomes very obvious that people go to one source or one type of source for their information. You have person A arguing with person B, and person A knows person B is wrong, person B knows person A is wrong. They never quite get that on whatever social media tracks they are or whatever their computer or their search engines feed them, are actually dementing them to be at odds with each other. And Torba talks about this in his book as well. In other words, you would think like, well, why would humanists want to have Christians only see Christian sources of things? We’ll Because then the conflict will remain. When you get rid of person to person, face to face relationships, people can be very uncivil and inhumane to each other because they never have to see each other. So living in a virtual reality, even though they get up in the morning, they have breakfast, they have lunch, they have dinner. But so much of their interactions deny the person to person interchange. Andrea Schwartz (36:14) And it’s truly like these people are talking separate languages. Charles Roberts (36:18) I recall in a previous ministry I was involved in, a young man in the church said he wanted to talk with me. He needed some counsel and guidance about a relationship he had with a girl. I don’t remember the specifics of the issue, but the thing that struck me as we sat down in my office to talk about this, after 15 or 20 minutes, I had to stop him and I said, Let me ask you a question. Have you actually met this girl? No, we’re friends online. And he was talking as if it was, I guess, what I would call a, quote, real relationship, when this is somebody he would only interacted with in chat boxes. But to him, that was the real thing. That was the real reality. And I think this is another thing that we have to be cautious of and recognize. And I think, again, this is something that Torba is trying to call to our attention and help us to think about is the role of truth in our way of thinking about things. And it’s not something that’s malleable. If it is, then we’re doomed, because if there’s no real absolute truth, then you can get up and create a reality every day, and that leads to total chaos. Charles Roberts (37:32) But the same thing in terms of human relationships and what constitutes genuine human affection and interaction. Andrea Schwartz (37:39) How does this lead into the idea of transhuman humanism. Explain what that is and how this virtual reality plays into that. Charles Roberts (37:52) Well, as I understand it, and this is something else that’s not new, but it is the fusion moving beyond what what humanists would call merely human, the fusion of man and machine, the inclusion of, say, being able to consider the human brain as a type of computer. And just like, I can take the hard drive out of one of my computers and put it on the other computer, and it continues to function, where you can do the same thing with a human brain, either by transplant, or you can figure out some computerized way of actually, quote, downloading the content of a human brain and put it in another brain, creating artificial limbs and basically changing the whole structure of the inside of a human being to be something far more advanced and super intelligent. This is a humanistic dream that really goes all the way back, like Torbus says, to the Garden of Eden. And artificial intelligence plays that role, and that people don’t have to… Well, like the movie The Matrix. There’s the scene where Neo, the main character, is strapped in a chair with this thing stuck into his head, and they’re uploading how to do self defense and martial arts. Charles Roberts (39:02) At one point, he wakes up and he looks at the guy and he says, I know kung fu, because it’s all been uploaded into his head. That’s an example of the transhumanist dream. Andrea Schwartz (39:13) Instead of man looking at his problem as being sin, he can then say, Well, my problem is I’m just human. You hear people say this all the time, I’m only human. Well, on the sixth day of creation, God looked on all he had made, including human beings and called it good. The fact that you say, Hey, don’t blame me, I’m only human. God thought it was good that you were human. The problem is sin. But in the area of technology and computers, can you say a computer has sinned? Can you say an algorithm is sinning? Can you say that the answer to a question is untrue if whatever produces that answer that is just pulling from the data. So as soon as we move away from God created mankind in his own image, and that because of the rebellion and sin that we all inherit, that the Son of God took on human flesh. So anytime you want to demean humanity, in essence, you’re also demeaning the work of Jesus Christ. Charles Roberts (40:25) Yeah, there’s a sense in which we could say, look, if this group of people over here, they want to go off and start a society that’s purely based on artificial intelligence and transhumanist values, fine, go ahead and do it. We know that the ultimate future of that thing is failure and destruction because they have turned away from the only source of absolute truth. And we’ve had, for people who still have the memory of it in the lifetime of many of us, an example of how something like that, perhaps not quite as an advanced technological scale, but the impetus and the motive was the same. And that’s what we had in the Soviet Union and the major Communist countries. They wanted an entirely scientific society where religion, superstitions were all banished Everything would be done according to scientific detail. Well, 70 years of that in Russia and Eastern Europe showed where that eventually led. There were, of course, Christians who suffered horribly at the hands of these people who said, even in their suffering, you were doomed. You were never going to defeat the message of Christ, Jesus, our King. But they didn’t have to be proven right, but they were right because God has set into his creation immutable laws that You can dress them up in all kinds of fancy technology, but if you violate them, the consequences are the same. Charles Roberts (41:51) You will surely die. Andrea Schwartz (41:53) To carry the idea further of what is real, what is not, I think a lot people in our generation are discovering that things that we were told when we were growing up with further investigation and certain revelations coming out that just weren’t true. Right now, the whole idea of JFK files being released. Well, for a long time, people didn’t believe the narrative. The same is true with 9/11, the same is true with Vietnam, the same is true about various administrations in the US. So instead Instead of being overwhelmed by all this information, and I don’t know what’s real or what’s not, and taking the course that says, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. What is what is. I’m just going to try to live my life. The Christian response, and this is something that Torba refers to, is setting up a parallel economy. And by that, I think he’s referring to that it may seem like a David and Goliath moment before Goliath goes down, but that it doesn’t even matter if we see how being faithful is going to produce God’s blessing, we can’t sit by and let the enemies of God overtake all the information systems, et cetera, so that we do have to have parallel economies. Charles Roberts (43:20) Yes, that’s very much what he’s talking about. He began talking about this when he created GAB, and during the lockdowns from 2020 up until just a year or two ago, and that these are examples of humanistic-based ideas about how to control people and how to control societies. And the early Christians faced something similar in the Roman Empire of the day, where they found a means by which they could flourish as Christian communities while the other was collapsing around them. I mean, not like in some cataclysmic overnight event, but when societies collapse, it’s not like a bomb going off. It’s a slow, degrading, downgrade process. And all of a sudden, one day you look around and, Hey, wait a minute. What happened to civilization is not here anymore. Where did it go? But people who take seriously what Jesus said, being his disciples, and that he has all authority on heaven and on Earth, that we are to go out and make the nations his disciples. And he’s promised to bless miss that effort. And I think what Torba has talked about in this book is a part of that. I would like to mention, too, before we wrap everything up, another book that I think it’s available online and also from the Chalcedon store. Charles Roberts (44:44) It’s part of the Chalcedon monograph series that was published some years ago, but it’s called The Church as God’s Armory. And there’s a lot of good information there about how we need to be, not so much concerning artificial intelligence, but the general program of being God’s people in the world and the things that we ought to be thinking about and preparing for, because we’re in a battle. And if you aren’t ready for the battle, you’re not going to win, or you’re going to be hugely disadvantaged. I think Torbus book is a good example on this particular topic of Reclaiming Reality that we need to be reading and thinking about and encouraging others to do so. Andrea Schwartz (45:18) Exactly. So the name of the book, again, Reclaiming Reality with a subtitle, Restoring Humanity in the Age of AI. I believe it’s… I mean, I got my copy on Amazon. I guess that’s where you can get it, or maybe he has a website that you can do that there as well. Charles Roberts (45:36) I think so, yes. Andrea Schwartz (45:38) I don’t know that we’ve exhaustively covered this. I imagine in future discussions, there’ll be more to add to it. But I thought his book was helpful in at least getting you to think about things. I did ask my grandson this one question. I said, Can you tell when you’re looking at something that’s AI or something that’s generated by a person? He says, Well, now it’s easy, but you can imagine in the future it’ll get harder. But he says, I always know it’s something that’s produced by artificial intelligence when the word tapestry is in it. He says, Boy, oh, boy, AI ChatGPT loves the word tapestry. He says, So as soon as I see the word tapestry, I know this is artificial intelligence. Charles Roberts (46:18) Okay. It’s a good thing to remember. Andrea Schwartz (46:22) All right, folks. Outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com is how you reach us. And Charles, thank you, and we’ll talk with you next time. Charles Roberts (46:30) Thank you. Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.…

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Reconstructionist Radio Master Feed

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330: Have You Joined the Cult of Easy Christianity? 52:58

6 weeks ago52:58

52:58

This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . 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 kronz@roncronz.com 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, outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com 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.…

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329: What are the Ethical Implications of Organ Donation? 40:07

7 weeks ago40:07

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This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . 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. One of the things I like to do is to bring back guests who have previously been on this podcast to get updates on the subject the matter they’ve covered. Back in November of 2022, I had Dr. Heidi Klesig, an anesthesiologist, to discuss the realities of organ transplantation. And then the following year, 2023, she returned to describe in detail the manufactured diagnosis of brain death that makes organ transplantation possible. She’s back with us today to share some recent developments regarding the subjects she’s previously addressed. Just this past week, she attended in Washington, DC, the Integrity in the Determination of Brain Death Symposium. This was a Catholic conference sponsored by National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, and the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Catholic University of America. It was attended by doctors, nurses, lawyers, philosophers, and clergy. There were presentations on the philosophical basis, or lack thereof, for brain death, the new American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline, Whether informed consent is needed for apnea testing the struggles of nurses as they care for a living person one moment and have to immediately switch to caring for organs the next when a brain death diagnosis is declared, the question of conscience protection Corrections for those who disagree, and the legal status of brain death nationally and at the state level. Andrea Schwartz (02:07) Now, that’s a lot of things covered, but thankfully, Heidi can help unpack it. So thanks for coming back to the podcast. Last, Heidi. Dr. Heidi Klesig (02:15) Oh, thank you so much, Andrea, and I appreciate the opportunity. There’s been so much going on in this discussion, this debate about brain death since we spoke last. So I’ll try to bring us up to speed a little bit. I think when I spoke to you last, we were talking about how the diagnosis of brain death really was established without any data. In 1968, the Ad hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School put out a paper proposing this idea that we could simply declare certain neurologically disabled people in a coma to be dead already. But they had no tests, they had no studies, they had no evidence for this. The only real prospective multi-center study was performed two years afterward in 1970. And the result of that study was that they were unable to find any way to declare someone dead before cardiac arrest, which is, of course, the traditional means that we determine someone is dead. And they determined that brain death was actually a prognosis of impending death, but wasn’t a diagnosis of death itself. Andrea Schwartz (03:29) Okay, so let me Let me stop you for a second and ask, prior to this time, let’s go back the early part of the 20th century. There didn’t seem to be a need for a diagnosis of brain death. Why did this diagnosis end up being something useful and for whom? Dr. Heidi Klesig (03:49) Interestingly, the Ad-Hoc Committee put it right out in black and white in their landmark article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They had a utilitarian reasons. They said these people’s lives were a burden to themselves and to others. Secondly, they said that declaring them to be dead would free up ICU beds, and it would facilitate organ donation. And in fact, organ donation and the desired for more and more organs has really driven this. Dr. Elko Vedex, who was a neurologist at Mayo Clinic and an author of the 1995 2010 and 2023, American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guidelines, stated in 2006 that what is driving the diagnosis of brain death, in fact, is organs. He went on to say that the idea of brain death would not have much, if any, meaning if it were not for the sake of transplantation. Andrea Schwartz (04:53) Okay. So growing up, of course, I was born in the mid ’50s, so this was already being put out there in terms of the wonders of organ transplantation, we heard the term the person’s a vegetable. It just always irritated me because what vegetable? Lettuce, spinach? What vegetable are we talking about. And you’d hear people when they were discombobulated or frustrated, going, I’m just so brain dead today. Did that help this process of getting brain death acknowledged as real death because this was in the media, in stories, et cetera? Dr. Heidi Klesig (05:33) Did you just think about a vegetable and how dehumanizing that is? And the use of dehumanizing language in this debate has been key. We use dehumanizing language, usually to aid us in removing people’s human rights. So when we speak of someone as brain dead, a vegetable, it’s like saying the unborn child is a clump of cells. We use this to remove their humanity and the human rights protections that that entails. So you’re quite right about the language being a big problem here. Andrea Schwartz (06:11) So you start off by saying, Tremendous things are happening in a positive direction, and having just come from this symposium, why don’t you share some of those wins? Dr. Heidi Klesig (06:22) Sure. So because an increasing number of people are recognizing that my loved one who has been declared brain dead appears in no way dead. In fact, my loved one looks just like every other ICU patient that’s getting better. They’re warm, their heart is beating, they have excellent oxygen saturation on the monitors. Everything looks fine. But the neurologists have done a very small series of tests and have made this declaration. And so people have been challenging brain death diagnosis in of law. And in 2015, a woman named Aiden Halou, her father did not believe his daughter was dead and took this all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline, did not meet the legal definition of brain death under the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Excuse me. So because of this increasing number of high-profile lawsuits, a group of people who were calling themselves, and I hate this term, the brain death stakeholders, proposed changing US law. And so rather than encouraging doctors to follow the law, their aim was to make the law align with the American Academy of Neurology, Brain Death Guideline. Dr. Heidi Klesig (07:50) So they petition the Uniform Law Commission to change the law. The Uniform Law Commission is a group of lawyers and judges who volunteer our time to write model laws that can be adopted across the United States because we’d like our laws to be fairly uniform, especially when we’re trying to determine who is dead and who is not. It’s quite awkward if you’re dead in Maryland, but not dead in Idaho, right? Right. They’re trying to make it uniform. But after several years of study and debate, the Uniform Law Commission was unable to achieve consensus and actually tabled its work on revising the Uniform Uniform Determination of Death Act in September of 2023. But just three weeks following that, the American Academy of Neurology released a new brain death guideline, which essentially recapitulated the proposals refused by the Uniform Law Commission. And the big problem with the new guideline is they came out and said explicitly that people with ongoing partial brain function may be declared dead. Now, that’s a problem, to have it very explicitly written that when you’re brain dead, your brain might still be working a little bit. This had became very upsetting to Catholic health care. Dr. Heidi Klesig (09:11) The National Catholic Bioethics Center put out a position paper the following spring in 2024 calling this new guideline, and I quote, A decisive breakdown in the public consensus on death and organ donation. And this is because the new guideline allows allows people to be declared brain dead while they still have ongoing brain function. Andrea Schwartz (09:35) Now, just for a second, I want to go back to high school biology because I didn’t do a lot of further study. Maybe I took a class in college. I don’t remember. But the brain has to be working still if the heart is beating because there’s a portion of the brain that controls all those things. So are they just looking at cognitive parts of the brain to declare someone brain said, because how would the heart keep beating? How would circulation keep happening if there wasn’t some aspect? I think it’s the medula part of the brain that governs that. Maybe you can correct me. Dr. Heidi Klesig (10:11) Sure. This is why this is a difficult topic, because the idea of brain death is a very contrived medical diagnosis. They’re only looking at certain parts, and they’re totally ignoring others, as you mentioned. The heart actually has an internal pacemaker hearter automatically within it. So the heart will beat on its own. It’s the breathing that you’re thinking of, Andrea, that will stop when the medula, as you mentioned, is being compressed. So these people generally have a spontaneously beating heart because it has that automatic internal pacemaker. But most of them are going to be on a ventilator because they’re not able to generate breaths on their own at this point in the time of their care. Now, with continuing care, it has been shown that many of them do respond and improve. But so often, they’re not given the time for that because of the great hurry to make them organ donors. Andrea Schwartz (11:10) So there seems to be a very utilitarian approach to this, just the same way, and you mentioned abortion. If you tell a woman, You all, you have to stop your higher education. This will be a burden. So it’s like, what’s best for you? I imagine a lot of people get convinced that doing donation for their comatose relative is the good thing because think of all the other people who will live. But just like an abortion, we’re not really considering the baby. And in this, we’re not considering the patient who isn’t dead. Dr. Heidi Klesig (11:42) That’s correct. And I tell people whenever I speak, and I need to emphasize this, we have so much knowledge, and we have to make so many decisions every day. There’s not any way possible that we can individually We research every decision we make. We have to take a lot on authority. And whereas in the scientific journals, doctors, scientists, lawyers, philosophers have been hotly debating the brain death concept for years, the public is never informed and is simply told, give the gift of life, be an altruistic citizen. And they’re not told that behind the scenes, this is certainly not settled science, to use that term. So I don’t fault anybody who, in the goodness of their heart, gave a loved one to become an organ donor. I don’t fault anyone who believed what they were told, that this organ came from a dead person and received an organ. I don’t fault even doctors and nurses, because most of them are just going with what they’ve been taught. They’re given so much information in their training. They can’t possibly research at all. So again, I myself, in my early part of my career, I was part of an organ procurement, even though in my gut, it just seemed so wrong. Dr. Heidi Klesig (13:04) I went along because my authorities were telling me that this was the right thing to do. So I don’t fault anybody for having acted in the goodness of their heart on the information they had available at the time. But now we have better information, and that’s where I see what my role would be. I’m trying to communicate to people that this is something that, morally, we cannot count on. Andrea Schwartz (13:28) And it’s interesting because like so many things, people are not willing to give up what they’ve accepted as true. I can’t remember when I started on social media, but it’s been a while, and I saw a video of a doctor explaining, he was an older gentleman, I don’t even remember his name, you probably know who he is, talking about what happens in an organ procurement situation. I posted it, and Heidi, I got hate mail or hate responses or hate comments like, who do I think I them. Then in some cases, people whose relative was alive now because of a transplant were saying, Oh, you think my father should be dead or you think this should be that? Suddenly, it all became in terms of, how do I feel about this? Well, after having talked with you twice already, on your site, you have this card that you can print out saying, I refuse to be a organ donor. I put that in call it, and it goes everywhere with me. And then there are people who are saying, Well, that’s how selfish of you to not want to give somebody else life. Well, let’s say for whatever reason my organs are taken and I’m still alive and whatever, I have no problem with my destination because as a believer, I know I stand before the throne of God. Andrea Schwartz (14:53) That’s next step. But we also need to be concerned for people who will subsequently find out what the circumstances were when they got their transplant. So that it’s not a selfish thing. It’s that you want God’s law to be followed, whether you’re the recipient or on the other side of it. And so I think that’s why Christians need to look at this as the next area. Most Christians will say abortion is wrong, et cetera, but this needs to be viewed in terms of, are we taking image bearers of God and deciding we’re going to cut them up and use them for profit? Dr. Heidi Klesig (15:34) The word of God emphasizes that we are to care for the vulnerable, and these donors are not dead. I would say if you’ve received an organ, you did the best you could with the information you had, we’re happy that you’re alive. We cherish your life. But I think in a funny way, there would probably be more organs available for people with organ failure if we were truthful about this. I know a man personally who turned down multiple offers of organs from family and friends because he didn’t want to trouble or put at any risk his family members, because in his mind, he thought he could get an organ from a dead person. And later, when he found out the facts, he was terribly troubled. He believes his conscience was violated by people who deceived him, frankly, into taking an organ from someone that he now knows lost their life during that organ procurement. Andrea Schwartz (16:33) Just to be clear, when you said he had family and friends who offered, not every organ donation means the end of the life of the donor. Dr. Heidi Klesig (16:43) So any organ except the heart can be given by a donor who stays alive after the procedure. And so if you need a kidney, you can take a kidney from a living donor. A liver, they give a lobe of the liver. If you need a lung, fascinating Interestingly, they take a lobe from each of two different donors and put one of each of two different donors, lobe of lung in you. There’s a lot of ways to do this in an ethical manner, and you don’t even have to be related. A nurse that I worked with at the Cain Clinic, received a kidney from an anonymous living donor who just felt that she wanted to do this for an unknown person, which is in the best tradition of selfless sacrifices and service. So there are good ways to do this. And I’m here to tell you, as far as the heart is concerned, there is currently in clinical trials a totally implantable artificial heart, which would be wonderful because it, of course, doesn’t involve the death of a neurologically disabled person in order to procure it. And you wouldn’t need any immune suppression if you took that thing. Dr. Heidi Klesig (17:51) So there’s a lot of good things on the horizon. I really think if we had been pouring our money research-wise into ethical options, we would have many good things by now that we’re just missing because we’re sticking with the current unethical system. Andrea Schwartz (18:05) So interestingly enough, Heidi, this morning, I have various people around the country who will send me articles. And there was this article about a man who I believe was comatose with a drug overdose. I think this is a number of years ago, you probably know the case, where they were harvesting what organs of his would still be valuable, considering he had been a drug user. I imagine they’re some that aren’t, but that he woke up during the procurement procedure. He opened his eyes. The interesting part about the article was that the medical profession was saying, Oh, this was just a one-off. Oh, I see. Just a one-off. And then they were very distressed, the authors of the article, at least who they were quoting, that information like this might discourage people from being organ donors. Well, once you find out that you can wake up, wake up from what? Being dead? No, wake up from being called dead when you aren’t dead. Dr. Heidi Klesig (19:08) Yes. I think that sounds like the recent TJ Hoover case. And TJ Hoover was able to dance at his sister’s wedding in the subsequent year. He was in no way dead. I mean, none of these people are dead, but some of them are capable of recovery. And thankfully, TJ Hoover was one of them. The very concerning thing about the TJ Hoover ever case is that there was such a mindset of the people around him that he was dead, that he was going to become an organ donor, even though multiple doctors, nurses, finally, even some of the organ procurement team were saying, Wait, this man is moving. He’s crying. We have to do something here. There were those who were so brainwashed, I guess, is what I’d have to say, that they’re like, Just find another doctor to do it. And that is the problem. When we have a fixed opinion, even evidence sometimes falls on blind eyes. Andrea Schwartz (20:04) Is it true that the procurement team are usually not people from that particular hospital? That somebody at the hospital or maybe an A defense person from a procurement team comes in and says, Yes, this person’s brain dead. But it’s not usually hospital staff where the patient was that actually harvest the organs. Dr. Heidi Klesig (20:25) For ethical reasons, people do try to keep some separation between your doctor and then the organs doctor. So it’s actually by law, as a doctor or nurse, you’re not allowed to talk to the patient about donation. That has to be either someone from the organ procurement organization or someone delegated by the organ procurement organization to do that. And so they usually are a separate team because your own doctor, you want that doctor to be full in for your care. You don’t want a doctor who’s sizing you up as to how many organs that you amount to. You want to keep some separation. Andrea Schwartz (21:10) I see. So as a result of being at this symposium, and I also know that you were a presenter there, tell us what the aftermath is. Have people’s minds been changed? Dr. Heidi Klesig (21:22) Well, this is the wonderful thing. And I had a large number of people praying for this conference, and As I talk to your listeners, the one thing that I would encourage you is when you are going into a battle like this, which it has a spiritual component. And we just talked about how people can be very blinded by their presuppositions. Prayer is such an important part. In the months coming up to the symposium, I recruited people to help me, and I myself, every morning, every evening, I prayed for that conference. I I prayed that I would be able to declare the truth in love. I prayed that I would have the tongue of the learned. I prayed that I would have great depth of insight and perspicuity of thoughts so that I could communicate well. And it was amazing to see God work. The other thing I prayed about was I prayed by name for those who were going to be on the other side of the podium that have a different view. I took those men and women, and I would every morning, every night, pray for them by name that God would open their eyes, that he would change their hearts. Dr. Heidi Klesig (22:31) I prayed for the audience that would be hearing. Also, Dr. Joe Morecraft, that Andrea and I were talking about earlier, he and his wife, Becky, he emphasizes the importance of praying through the Psalms, and those involve some imprecatory prayers. So whereas I never would pray for anyone by name in that way, God says that we should pray that the councils of those who oppose should be put to confusion. And so I prayed that, too. And so as we look at the results of this conference, I can only say that it was a matter of prayer. And so I was able to speak about AAN, Brain Death Guideline being unacceptable. There was a doctor there saying that we should keep the status quo in that guideline. There was a doctor that was saying we should have that guideline and adding a few more tests. There were two doctors who spoke on the philosophy of brain death. One saying that philosophically this makes no sense and the other saying it did. But I really have to put it down to the power of prayer in addition to the power of the facts that I was able to present. Dr. Heidi Klesig (23:41) And interestingly, the poll of the audience prior to our discussion, the majority was in favor of keeping the American Academy of Neurology Brain Death Guidelines. The exit polling after we spoke showed that now a majority felt that the guidelines are untrustworthy, which is a wonderful thing. Andrea Schwartz (24:04) So this actually, I’m glad we got a chance to talk about the background because it’s good to get the update. But really what I wanted to talk to you about was staying in the fight. I imagine there have been times long term, short term, where you feel like you’re not progressing, that success isn’t happening. I would say a David and Goliath moment, except Goliath went down with some stones. Your stones take a little bit longer and have to be accumulated. How do you keep going? In other words, it seems so momentous or monumental, I should say, that there are other doctors with degrees and backing from prestigious institutions. What’s a little old girl like Heidi going to do to change any of this? Dr. Heidi Klesig (24:56) I ask the Lord that very question very frequently. I did not set out to do this. I had the experience I had during my training, and I would talk to people as they came into my sphere of influence, but they were always so very interested, and they would want to know more. It was really a providential set of circumstances. I wrote a letter to the editor to Jeff Pollard’s magazine, and he put me in touch with another author, and we wrote a book. And then I was asked to speak at a medical conference, and in my preparation for that, I thought, I’m reading all the literature. Why don’t I write another book? And then people ask me to come and speak, and then they tell their associates, and this just seems to continue to blossom. So God really has put us together, and I’m just along for the ride, really. But it’s been a thrilling journey. And one of the things that I’d like to encourage your listeners with is something, again, that Pastor Morekraft said I heard in a sermon a while ago. He said, After salvation and true conversion, as your heart and mind are being really converted to think the Lord’s thoughts after him, he said, The rest of our lives are a grand adventure of seeing God keep his promises. Dr. Heidi Klesig (26:15) And so that is the most encouraging thing in the world. And I’m here to testify, I’m seeing it happen. And so, yes, there will be setbacks. I mean, yes, little David dropped the giant, but his problems were by no means over at that point, as we all know. So we have to just keep on with the journey, and we have to be patient. My biggest problem is I like to push. I want to do the next thing. I want to do the next thing. And really, I have had to learn to wait and let God open the door, and then I will walk through it. Andrea Schwartz (26:46) Romans 8: 28 is a favorite verse among many, that God works all things together for the good. I’m guessing, and you can tell me if this is true, when you first realized what you had been involved in, I imagine there was plenty of shame and guilt, like what did I participate in? But God has turned it for the good, not because you go around self-flagellating, I’m terrible, I’m terrible, but you accept forgiveness and you realize, as Dr. Morekraft says, that’s the starting point. In other words, without that background, could you do the work God had intended for you to do? I think it’s important for people to remember because we’re It’s supposed to walk by faith, not by sight. Had you walked by sight, I don’t think we’d be talking today. Dr. Heidi Klesig (27:36) That’s right. And really, those hard things in our past, God can use them for good. And in fact, I I had to, I had to repent. I had to go to the Lord in faith and find him faithful in forgiveness. And so this also gives me a platform to share the gospel with people because all of us have made mistakes. All of us have done things we regret, but I’m able share the hope of Jesus Christ as part of this ministry, and that’s a beautiful thing. Andrea Schwartz (28:06) And I think that it might be a normal response to make it us versus them. But the very fact that you prayed for the people who you know would do their best to articulately oppose you really goes back to the idea that the message of the gospel is reconciliation, not we win and you lose. Saul, the Pharisee, to Paul, the Apostle, is a great example of that. And so instead of coming out, not that we wouldn’t be direct and forceful and use truth as our weapon, but we don’t have to hate the people who are currently opposing us, do you? Dr. Heidi Klesig (28:47) There was a great article just on Cal Ceden’s website about reconciliation that I found tremendously helpful. And really, I always think everyone I meet is a potential insider. They’re not my enemy. Everyone could change their heart and mind through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you think of everyone you meet as a potential insider, it changes your viewpoint. Andrea Schwartz (29:11) And while it’s probably true that there is tremendous money to be made in this whole process, especially because I don’t know the percentages of transplants that actually work, but the people along the way all get paid. Yes, it could be true that people are in it just for the money. But as you’re learning, there are people who are there principally, and they need to have their hearts and minds changed. So maybe it’s true. Follow the money, follow the money. And that would give you things to investigate But that’s not the endpoint for a Christian, is it? Dr. Heidi Klesig (29:47) No. It’s quite true that the last numbers I have in 2020, the transplant industry was a $48 billion industry in the United States alone. But I really don’t I think that’s most of it. I really think this is something that people were taught, that doctors and nurses were taught, and they accepted it on the basis of authority and on the basis of majority. Everyone’s going along with it. But of course, as you know, majority and authority are both logical fallacies. Beyond that, there really is a lot of fear. If I question the brain death diagnosis, now I have to come to grips with the fact that for how many years of my career where I have been participating in the medical homicide, I’d have to say, of people who deserve my care and protection. And that’s hard to come to grips with, right? And also, if I do question this paradigm, I could lose my job. And that’s also very difficult. There was a doctor who spoke at the conference, and he advocated. He said, I really think we should be giving people better informed consent about this. And a questioner raised his hand and said, Well, couldn’t you just tell your patients you think this is unethical? Dr. Heidi Klesig (31:04) And the man said, I wish I could. I’d lose my job. I mean, that was the implication. So there is such a spirit of fear. And in Christ, we cannot have a spirit of fear. We’re given a spirit of power and love in a sound mind. And we have to serve the Lord first and not have a fear of man. Andrea Schwartz (31:23) I’m thinking, in fact, that this is your area. This is the area where God uniquely prepared you. Well, there are a lot of areas right now where you have Christians really working hard to educate people and try to bring them back to biblical foundations. I’m thinking about abolitionist movement for abortion. Biblical cosmology, when people want to say, let’s look at what the Bible says, those who are opposed to the slew of vaccine or the transgender things or even child trafficking. At first, there’s a lot of mocking that goes on and making you feel as though you’re in such a minority. But isn’t it true that you plus the Lord is a majority? Isn’t that how you look at it? Dr. Heidi Klesig (32:08) I mean, that’s right. If you look at it with the long view of eternity, these light momentary kerfuffles are nothing. And yes, at the conference, there was a doctor who… He was quite upset with me, and he kept making remarks about, well, the minority position. But I like it when I get somebody like that upset, because when someone gets mad, I can tell that that person has heard me. The message has penetrated and has been understood. And I think getting mad is a totally appropriate response. I mean, I was mad when I figured out what I had done. I think it’s the right way to feel. And so when someone gets angry, if you get that angry response like you did, Andrea, when you showed that video, that’s not a loss. I think of that as a win because that person is going to think about it later and may come to some change of mind. Andrea Schwartz (33:13) I think that happens in so many story is that I remember talking to somebody about the abortion issue, and she was troubled. And eventually she came to me and said, I have to make a confession. I said, What’s that? She said, Well, I had an abortion years ago. I said, Well, why are you confessing that to me? Have you confessed to the Lord? And she said, Yes. And I said, I hope you’ve had used this as an opportunity to share this with your daughters. And she said, Oh, no, no, I could never share it with my daughters that I had had an abortion. I don’t want them to think that that was okay. And it was like she missed the point. She had been saved from something that, aside from the fact that we’re all born at war with God, but she took a life. But if you don’t share the forgiveness, if you don’t share it, I like what you said, when you see somebody who’s a bit irked by what you’re doing, intensify your prayers that God will continue to make that person uncomfortable, because we all know we only change our minds when we realize that it’s not us. Andrea Schwartz (34:15) It’s what God’s word has to say on the subject. Dr. Heidi Klesig (34:19) That’s right. And really, how could God show himself faithful if everything went smoothly? These are the opportunities for God to show himself strong and be glorified. Andrea Schwartz (34:30) So what would your encouragement be to anybody, and not necessarily just in this arena, because we have big discussions now about in vitro fertilization, and we have big discussions on the right place, tax dollars to go, and all this or that, regardless of the fight that someone’s in, and it is a fight, how would you encourage them to keep doing what they’re doing, seeking God, and just wait for the success? Dr. Heidi Klesig (34:58) God has given all of us something to do. And believe it or not, the brain death battle that I’m in is not my primary job. My primary job is wife and mother. And I would love some of these full-time doctors who were at the conference where I was speaking to take this over from me because this actually is a distraction from my full-time job. Look at what you’re doing and do it with all your heart. If you’re a wife and mother, you are creating a home and raising a family that will go through all eternity praising the Lord. That is a huge responsibility. Seek the Lord and do it with all your heart. When your children are out of the house, like mine, if God lays on your heart something that you could contribute to, just be open to it. Pray and ask him to open the doors and show you the way, and he will be faithful to do that. Andrea Schwartz (35:55) Yes. And I can say that’s true in my case and many others that we both know. All right. Before we go, you mentioned you’d authored two books, so I’d like you to share those titles. And then also, if people want to stay up on what’s happening in this whole arena, websites or ways in which they can get informed or even contact you. Dr. Heidi Klesig (36:16) Sure. The two books, the first one I wrote with a nurse whose name is Christopher Bogaj, and it’s called Harvesting Organs and Cherishing Life: What Christians need to know about Organ Donation and Procurement. And then the second book is called The Brain Death Fallacy, which is a little bit more technical. If you’re a doctor or a nurse, this would have the citations and the footnotes that you would want. But honestly, it’s not too hard. I have a 95-year-old woman in our church who read it, and she didn’t think it was too difficult. So that would be the brain death fallacy. If you look at our website or on Amazon, you can find the books. The website is a really nice resource. If you want to find information about all kinds of different ethical issues of transplantation. That’s respectforhumanlife. Com is where you find that. And be sure to put the word human in there or you won’t get us. Respectforhumanlife. Com. You can find our new video series on that. I’ve just done a series, the first of eight. I’ve done three short videos, which are all less than 10 minutes long, and they’re meant for sharing with your loved ones to help them understand the brain death concept, what is this new type of donation after circulatory death. Dr. Heidi Klesig (37:33) There’s also a new type of transplant procedure called NRP, where they actually clamp off the carotid arteries to your brain and then resuscitate your organs. It’s a horrifying thing, but it is being done right now. And so those first three are available. I have three videos coming out on tissue donation, whole body donation, and xenotransplantation, which is using animal organs. And then we have a couple coming out wrap up. I’m also on X if you want to follow at Heidi Klesig-Mde. Andrea Schwartz (38:05) Okay. I think for a lot of people, this is going to be, I don’t know enough about this and go ahead and explore it. I have found that when you’re in casual conversation, and currently, I know someone who is an anesthesiologist, and as we’ve had discussions, I’ve discovered was participating the same way that you had. Rather than coming out gangbusters and saying, That’s wrong, and the natural thing would be, Well, excuse me, are you a doctor? I’m really glad that you have resources for lay people and then some that would have greater impact on professionals, because a lot of times, and you hear this all the time from doctors, whether it’s this or nutrition, a lot of times they don’t know the current advancements that have taken place. Just to hear what you had to say about a mechanical heart that would have no issues with rejection because anybody who knows anything about transplantation knows that people are on immune suppressant drugs for the rest of their life. So even those who want to go into medical research and whatever, these are the areas that Christians can really participate in because it has to do with life, not with death. Dr. Heidi Klesig (39:25) I look forward to the time when we can 3D print all our replacement where it’s from our own cells. The research field is wide open, and so we do have a lot of hope. Andrea Schwartz (39:37) All right. Well, very good. Well, Heidi, thank you so much. Hopefully, I’ll have you back again sometime, and you can tell us of greater strides that the Lord has allowed to be made in this area. Dr. Heidi Klesig (39:47) Amen. Thank you, Andrea. Andrea Schwartz (39:48) All right. Outofthequestionpodcast@gmail.com is how you reach us, and we’ll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu.…

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328: Is Sexual Freedom Destroying Our Prosperity? 44:52

8 weeks ago44:52

44:52

This transcript was auto-generated. If you would like to submit edits, or volunteer to edit more transcripts for us, please reach out . 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. Would you be surprised to discover that sexual freedom has an impact on economic growth and prosperity? My guest today does. Feler Bose has written a book dealing with this very issue entitled Sexual Freedom and its Impact on Economic Growth and Prosperity. In it, he expands on the work of J.D. unwin, whose thesis demonstrated that limiting sexual freedom is a crucial aspect of economic advancement. Feler Voase is an economics and finance professor at Indiana University east and holds degrees in engineering, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, economics and theological studies. His research is expansive in the areas of microeconomics, political economy, law and economics, and the economics of religion. Thanks for joining me today, Feler. Feler Bose (01:25) Thank you for having me, Andrea. Andrea Schwartz (01:27) Christians know that the Bible prescribes definite sexual rules and boundaries in order for God’s blessings rather than his judgments to fall upon them. But this reality is true whether or not individuals self consciously adhere to God’s commands or have even opened a Bible. If you would lay out your general thesis, or as others call it, your prescription for a free society and how various moral frameworks affect economic outcomes and how biblical ethics and morality are instrumental in the creation of what you call high civilizations. Feler Bose (02:09) All right, so let me take a few steps back. When I first went to graduate school, I went to George Mason University, which was for my PhD in economics. And there, you know, it’s a very kind of a free market kind of school. And so the people that I was hanging out with, they all saw freedom as economic freedom as good, political freedom is good. I mean, all, all freedom is good is kind of the idea they were kind of everybody’s kind of talking. I mean, there’s a lot of literature on how economic freedom is actually. Yeah, is actually good for economic prosperity and economic growth. There’s also some literature on the political side of things. Political freedom is good. But though that’s kind of a mixed bag, it’s not necessarily true. And then, of course, personal freedoms are good. You know, we don’t want people going after your raw milk purchase or something like that. Right. I mean, we want personal freedoms. And so that kind of also ties into the idea of, well, you should be able to do whatever you want in the bedroom kind of situation. And for me, when I was going to grad school, you know, being a Christian, that kind of got me questioning because it’s you know, why is sexual freedom good? Feler Bose (03:13) I mean, why is allowing for adultery or homosexuality or something? Why is that good? And so like you said, you know, scripture is very clear, right? God blesses nations that follow his word when it comes to sexual morality. And whether. And also if, you know, if people are not following his prescriptions on that, then we would expect to see judgment on that nation. And that judgment, many times, if, you know, many scripturally is right. It’s economics in many ways, right? There’s a lot of prosperity. They lose their. Their goal to the invading, you know, invading kings and so on. And so we do, you know, we do see economic harm that comes about because of, you know, disobeying God’s laws in the area of sexuality. So that’s kind of how, you know, that’s kind of how my project, I guess you could say it started me thinking about these things in an environment that saw all freedom as good. And I remember reading Rushdoony’s Institutes a few years earlier talking about Unwin, who, you know about sexual freedom and how, you know, this anthropologist in the 1930s has written about this idea of, you know, how sexual freedom results in declining civilizations, whereas sexual restraint results in expanding civilizations and civilizations expanding, trading around the world, achieving great things. Feler Bose (04:40) So I knew that story in one hand, and I also knew what the scripture said about the issue. And of course, being in a graduate school environment, you have people who disagree with you if you were to bring those points up. But the thing is, nobody has actually done research in this area. It’s not like a well researched area. Since Unwin, I cannot say too many people have really talked about it, dealt with this topic. And so I thought, well, I got to figure out a way to make, you know, make this kind of a calling, I suppose, where I would like to kind of push on this research topic. Andrea Schwartz (05:13) So had you ever heard of Unwin prior to reading Rushdoony’s Institutes or other others of his work? Feler Bose (05:20) No. I mean, his Institutes is where I first heard about Unwin. Now, one of the things I really appreciate about Rushdoony, it’s. Is that, you know, I think if I remember correctly, he reads like 100, 250 books per year or something of that, which is quite a prolific reader. And therefore he’s. His citations are tremendous. I mean, I like looking at his citations. You know, if there’s a topic I’m interested in and if he has written about it, I can also. I enjoy looking up all the citations that he has because it’s In a lot of the research, and modern research on certain topics is very limited by what Google puts out for you or something. It’s really. You don’t get any in depth anymore sometimes many of the research in the academia. And so I think, you know, someone like him and others also that are very prolific, you know, readers who can then take what they read and write, you know, transform what they read and write it, write about it. You know, those citations and sources are very valuable to kind of delve into a topic. Andrea Schwartz (06:17) That’s interesting that you say that, because having known him personally, if you ever went into his house in order to eat dinner, stacks of books had to be removed from the dinner table in order for, you know, plates to be put on. And I was always amazed at the extensive nature of his reading. Some of it was really what I would consider. Why would you read this? This is like, you know, he would. Sexual practices of such and such. And it’s like, why would you do it? And he said, because I need to understand out there what’s being said and then pair it up with what the Bible says. Now, as you pursued this study, based on what Rushdoony mentioned about Unwin, did you find that that’s exactly what you had to do? You had to start reading and researching things that normally the average Christian wouldn’t want to look into? Feler Bose (07:10) Yeah. So, you know, I graduated from graduate School, my PhD in 2007, 2008, around that time. And to be honest with you, I didn’t. I had an idea what I wanted to do with my research. But, you know, being an economist, it has to be data driven, which is kind of the thing that kind of gets you published in our profession, whereas in a different profession that’s not necessarily true. So it was actually in 2012 before. Well, I thought about it. I tried to figure out what to do. I mean, God providentially allowed me to spend a semester at a big research university in West Virginia where I was able to access a law library and kind of collect data. And so it kind of, you could say that visit there kind of kickstarted my research in this topic beyond just, you know, ideas in my head. And honestly, you know, the book was written, what was published in 2020, end of 2024. So, you know, 12 years later, I wrote this book. But over the period of these 12 years, I have been collecting articles. I’ve been writing, you know, empirical papers, I’ve been collecting articles, collecting books, collecting. Feler Bose (08:14) Right. Things. I just, you know, and in fact, it’s interesting because Even God brings people into your. Like, I had no idea how to think about Unwin’s thesis. I mean, Unwin has said these things don’t go together. Sexual freedom does not go together with economic prosperity. But he didn’t know why. You know, I mean, Freud didn’t know why. I mean, a bunch of people, nobody really knew why that was the case. But, you know, so, I mean, sometimes you just have conversations with people and suddenly that person say, hey, we thought about this or that, you know, saying God brings the right people in your life at the right time, and then the lights kind of go off and you start exploring further, you know, these topics. And then. Yeah. So the book is a product of, you could say, a dozen years. I collected a lot of research over the years and, you know, put to put it together. Andrea Schwartz (09:00) So you mentioned something being data driven. I’m not sure a lot of people understand what that explain why if you’re going to publish under the banner of economics, that it has to be data driven. Feler Bose (09:14) Yeah. So economics has kind of. It is kind of, you could say, evolved to becoming more data driven. So maybe 100 years ago it wasn’t. I mean, you could, you could have a lot of thought, you know, more of a political economy kind of situation in the past where you could write, you know, write in more pros, I guess you could say. But nowadays people are like, well, you’re saying economic freedom and sexual freedom don’t go together, or sexual freedom means less economic growth. Well, prove it. Right. And so the way you want to prove it is to see if you can collect data and run and run statistical regressions and see what do you get when you do that. And so I think that’s kind of where the economics has kind of pushed the research is. Yeah, I mean, if you’re going to say something, you’re going to hypothesize something, you know, you’re not just finding different sources and putting it all together. No, you gotta actually have data. And that shows that to be the case. Otherwise, it’s just your bias, you know, it’s just your bias that is saying this. Right? I mean, that’s kind of what’s kind of. Feler Bose (10:14) You’re just picking and choosing your story line to write a story as opposed to, well, here’s what I got. Here’s the data I collected, here’s what I did. And it’s also. You can also hopefully replicate it if somebody else wants to be like, okay, give me your data. Let me see if I find the same thing. Well, then it can be replicable. And so. And that’s kind of, you know, why data analysis is very important. Andrea Schwartz (10:35) So just to be clear, it’s not like any researcher shows up with a topic as a blank slate. He’s going to bring his presuppositions, his worldview, ideas, because I believe it’s inescapable, as others will. You know, this is not a new concept to me. But did you go into this saying the Bible says this because you said you were a Christian, you’d already read Rushdoonyand gravitated towards that. How do you as a researcher not find what you’re looking for as opposed to finding what’s there? Feler Bose (11:11) Yeah. So, you know, everybody has a bias. I mean, you know, we all start with the certain fundamentals we work off of, I think, and especially in, you know, I know whenever I talk to my colleagues in conferences and so on, they all come with their bias about this topic. I mean, it’s, it’s pretty incredible. And, you know, you can get questioned pretty roughly, you know, because of that, because they all have their bias. You can tell the data says this, but they don’t necessarily want to believe it. Yeah, I mean, I know. I expect it now. I did, like I said, one of the things I did write in my book is the data that I’ve. The analysis that I have done is just. Is really a very preliminary because I look at stuff at the state level in the United States and even I did some European countries also. I mean, there’s a lot of research that needs to be done on an individual basis. So there’s a lot more work that needs to be done. So it’s not. I don’t want to say I’ve done the final word on empirical analysis. It’s certainly at the state level. Feler Bose (12:06) I’ve certainly written enough papers that anybody who wants to write on this topic has to kind of, you know, cite my work, I guess, as to why they agree or disagree with me. But yeah, I mean, for sure, a lot of people have. Will come out and with their biases. Maybe one of the biggest concerns with data, data analytics and so on and empirical analysis is that sometimes, you know, under certain conditions, the data is. The results can come out slightly different. You know what I’m saying? That’s kind of part of the science. You might get someone who actually gets an opposite result and then you kind of have to go back. That’s when the debate starts and you start, you know, you use different techniques or you use better data sources to kind of you know, hopefully come at the. Come to the truth. Andrea Schwartz (12:50) Okay. Okay. So basically, as you go through the first parts of your book, you sort of lay the groundwork for how you’re going to approach the topic. And one of the parts that I thought was incredibly interesting were two scenarios, true scenarios that you use as illustrative of what happens when males degrade themselves into moral decadence. And you cited the situation that the story Mutiny on the Bounty portrays. And you also talked about the early years after the Bolshevik Revolution. I think both of those. And if you would expound on them, some set the stage for how we should look at the situation in our time in our day. Feler Bose (13:39) Right, right. So let me, you know, maybe talk about the Soviet Union. So in the Soviet Union, you know, when it became the Soviet Union, I guess when they. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the tsar, the Christian czar of Russia, they implemented. Right. And the Marxists saw the family as, you could say, a threat to society. You know, it wasn’t what they. They saw a family system as exploitative. And so they kind of wanted to liberate the families and liberate women and so on. And so they allowed for things like easy divorce, homosexuality. They. They basically said, you can’t even adopt kids if you wanted to. And I mean, anything today we see in America, I mean, you could, you know, what people are trying to do is what they did in the Soviet Union, but very quickly. I mean, it happened like in the US it’s been happening over many decades, you could say, but there it just happened within a few months or years. And so what happened is once the Soviet Union kind of liberated itself sexually is it started creating all sorts of problems in the society. You know, men having summer brides and then they’ll divorce after summer’s over, and then they’ll, you know, go somewhere else and have another wife, and then they’ll divorce and go somewhere else. Feler Bose (14:51) And so I think. I think Sorokin, who called it the glass of water theory, where, hey, if you’re thirsty, it doesn’t matter which glass of water you drink from, as long as you satisfy your thirst. I mean, that was kind of the mentality, if I’m, you know, if I want to meet my sexual needs, doesn’t matter which woman I do it with. Kind of the idea that the Soviets had done, and that resulted in basically in their collapse of their society. You can imagine a lot of kids were born out of wedlock. Then you started having growing gangs, you know, violence. And basically society was collapsing. The economic system was also collapsing. And of course with the war with Germany looming. Right. I mean, this talent decided, well, we need to, this is crazy. We need to kind of reverse course. And so they kind of impose this sort of a Victorian morality back on this, back on the Soviets, you know, and then basically stabilize themselves in many ways. I mean, though they still struggled, even the divorce, even though they kind of got, you know, made it illegal to commit homosexuality, you know, made, you know, divorce harder to get and all these other things, all these reforms that they instituted, it still was, you know, made abortion difficult to get and so on. Feler Bose (16:01) It’s still, it, the Reformation didn’t happen completely. It was kind of a top down imposed order. And so there’s, there’s still some problems today in the Soviet Union, Russia, for example, with the high divorces and the higher number of abortions that still kind of, you could, you could maybe argue it’s the result of that. The other example that I use was HMS Bounty. Again, it was a ship, you know, they’d look for breadfruit in Tahiti. And usually, I guess those years the captains didn’t allow their men to mingle with the natives. But this captain of the HMS Bounty allowed, you know, his crew to mingle with the natives, which, and the natives were pretty sexually libertine. And so they kind of, they kind of got lazy in the process and, you know, kind of lived, you know, very loosely, you could say, resulting in. Right. Many problems that occurred. And in fact, when they had the mutiny later on, when they were returning, sorry, when they’re going back, you know, to where they wanted to go back, they had it, there was a mutiny. And so a bunch of guys went and formed their own society in this island, Pitcairn Island. Feler Bose (17:06) And there they, that island, you know, again, sexual liberty. Liberty and so on. They had many problems. They couldn’t, even though they had, you know, one of the things economists think is very important, like good geography, right. You have a good weather, you have all, you know, you can grow crops all year round. I mean, that’s a great place where you should be able to become wealthy and prosperous. But instead, right, you had decadence and, you know, many problems in society. And until the end, in the end, I think when there was only one man left, he became a Christian, they found a Bible and he becomes a Christian. And you know, society kind of turns around and they have more stability and peace and less violence. And you know, they start, you could say, rebuilding society from. Because they followed the Christian worldview, right? Andrea Schwartz (17:56) And that’s the part that I think was really telling. First of all, I had not known what you outlined about Russia in the early days after the revolution. And when people hear that certain countries decide to go back to what we would consider moral codes that are consistent with scripture, that in essence they’re doing it for religious reasons. In other words, they have come to faith. But you point out that oftentimes it’s the economic motivation that says we’ve destroyed our economy. And where a lot of people will say, and I’ve read that women being moral is the most important aspect of a society. When the women stop being moral, the society goes down. But you’re talking in terms of the morality of the men, which would be consistent with scripture holding men to a higher account. Feler Bose (18:50) Right, right. So that’s kind of the interesting thing. Even like a lot of the literature and a lot of people will say that, yeah, women kind of, you know, drive society. But ultimately, I mean, even kind of when Unwin kind of suggests that also that it is actually women’s. Yeah. Sexual morality, that’s very, a lot more important than men’s. But I mean it’s very, but it’s very obvious. Scripture talks about, you know, men also being sexually, you know, like they find fulfillment, sexual fulfillment in marriage only it’s not outside of marriage in any way or, you know, or marrying more than one woman. Right. I mean, doesn’t the Bible also discourages that. Admin also calls it Pauline monogamy. And he said basically, I mean, if you think about Pauline monogamy, I think the British are the right. I think in Unwin’s example, the British were the ones that kind of got it right the first time around and which became. And they become a world empire. And so yeah, I think his, I think, yes, I think scripturally is pretty clear that it is. Men and women have to be self restrained when it comes to sexual actions and all sexual actions should happen within marriage. Andrea Schwartz (19:57) So one of the things that came to mind as I was reading this, knowing what took place in the US in the 20th century, I would say most people would view it as a decline in sexual restraint. Certainly the 60s promulgated that. But then at the same time we’re saying, but look at the technological advancements, the Internet and being able to do various things on, you know, a worldwide scope. Do you think that that’s a contradiction to your thesis or do you think it’s just sort of an early stage of viewing it? Feler Bose (20:33) Yeah. So Unwin suggested that, you know, when a society gives up Its, you know, monogamy, strict monogamy, it takes about three generations for collapse to kind of occur. So we could argue that, you know, maybe if you think of three generations as, you know, 100 years or something like that, you’re not, you know, you still have some, some ways to go. So that’s one thing. I guess it’s a long process. The second thing, of course is, right, we know what is, but we don’t know what could have been. So that’s kind of the other aspect of it. I mean, yeah, things look like we’re doing good, we are prospering, and we are certainly, you know, things have gotten better over the last 50 years or so. But, but right. What could have been right? I mean, if you didn’t go through that sexual revolution, how would life have been? Maybe right, ideas would have been even better. But we don’t know what that is, right, because we didn’t go through. We’re going through a process, we’re going through a timeline that is kind of a declining timeline, maybe. So that’s, that’s the only way you can kind of discuss this as an, you know, as. Feler Bose (21:32) Because we don’t have a parallel universe where America doesn’t have a sexual revolution on one hand and another side where we have a sexual revolution. And we can’t compare the two things. You know, we can only, you have to assume that things would be, would have been better. Andrea Schwartz (21:47) I see. What about the numbers of children? Certainly with abortion, people are killing their offspring. But the average American I remember growing up and six or seven children was not abnormal. Nowadays you tell people you have three or more and they think, wow, that’s so unusual. How did the numbers of children factor into this? Feler Bose (22:11) The way I try to explain why sexual freedom and economic freedom don’t go together is because sexual freedom is about getting immediate satisfaction, pleasure and not worrying about the long term consequences of your behavior and actions. Whereas economic freedom is the notion of thinking about the future. Because if I were to start a business, I want to think, okay, hopefully I’ll build a successful business, maybe pass it on, my kids or maybe my grandkids can take over the business. And so now when you think in terms of economic freedom and thinking, you got to think long term, multi generational perspective. Whereas sexual freedom is about, hey, I can get satisfaction immediately kind of thing. So children, of course play a huge role in this because children are in a sense our way into the future. Right? I mean, our behavior, our actions, if you have children, it tends to be long term. Oriented. Um, so that was the, the key causal story that I mentioned in my book. And so, yeah, having fewer children or not having children. Right. For example, some relationships cannot have children. For example, you know, if you engage in homosexuality. Feler Bose (23:22) Right. That’s a relationship, that’s a sterile relationship. And so it is with modern day transgender. Right. If you’re castrating yourself, well, you can’t have children under those scenarios. You tend to be very short term thinking. Whereas if you want to have economic freedom and economic growth, you need to have a long term perspective and that includes having children. Now one thing I cannot say for sure is how many children do you have to have to be long term thinking? Is having two children enough or do you need to have six or seven children? That’s something, at least from a data perspective. I don’t have an answer to that and that’s certainly a topic that needs to be researched further. Andrea Schwartz (23:58) But the Bible does say in Psalm 127, Blessed is the man who has a quiver full. I, I’m not a archer, but I do know that a quiverful would involve I think at least seven, you know, the, the number of completion. So obviously we have gone away from the viewpoint that children are a blessing, are a heritage, and they’re looked at interestingly enough in an economic perspective as a down thing. I mean, even, even in Christian churches, Feler people with large families are often derided in terms of their carbon footprint or, you know, don’t you know how children come about? Would you say that this is a carryover from the humanistic view that has been accepted even within the church? Feler Bose (24:49) Correct. I mean, certainly, like I said, from a data perspective, I don’t have any information, but certainly from a Christian perspective, having more children, God says, is a blessing and it’s God who opens the womb and closes the womb. And so I think, yeah, if I were to come with a bias and do this analysis, I would certainly assume having more children tends to improve economic growth and prosperity in terms of long term thinking and so on. So that’s kind of the bias I would have if I were to go into the researching this topic. But like I said, yeah, it hasn’t. I don’t think it has been done yet. Andrea Schwartz (25:21) You also pointed out in the book that your eschatological views of how things culminate will have an effect on this. Talk a little bit about that. Feler Bose (25:34) Right. So there was some research that was done, I believe it was, in Guatemala by some other economists who looked at the impact of your belief in the millennium. Right. Are you a pre millennialist? For example, do you believe Christ coming is around the corner, it could happen anytime and so on. Or more of a post millennialist where you, you know, you believe things are going to get better and Christ will come at the end of the millennium, so to speak. And they have found that, the studies have found that if you’re kind of this Pentecostal kind of church because you’re kind of a pre millennialist, you don’t do anything that you know, your goal is to convert as many people as you, as you possibly can, but they don’t build any institutions. You know, you might build a Pentecostal church and Assemblies of God, might build a Bible college, right? But they’re not going to build a law school or a medical school and you know, things that you know, build civilizations. And so, so that’s kind of what they found in Guatemala. Whereas the more mainstream churches there, which are more post male and so on, so that are more long term oriented like, like I said, law school, medical schools, orphanages and so on. Feler Bose (26:40) So they were more focused on the long term institution building as opposed to churches that were premill, they were focused on short term institutions. Because if Jesus is coming tomorrow, well, why do you want to spend millions of dollars building a law school? I mean it doesn’t make any sense, right? Use that money to get as many people saved as you can. So that’s kind of what they found in Guatemala, which is the study that I highlighted in my book. Andrea Schwartz (27:02) So as I continue through the book, the last couple of chapters surprised me and the reason they surprised me is that you unabashedly bring in a biblical world in life view. Now talking to you, that doesn’t surprise me. But you always hear about these views would not be accepted among scholars or academics. How has your book been received? Feler Bose (27:27) Well, let me just say over the years that I’ve spoken on this, it’s, it’s, you know, I, I can, when you talk to people about your research, you know, it’s striking a chord because I have a feeling a lot of people have sexually broken lives. I mean that they haven’t found forgiveness for what they’ve done. And so when you bring it up, it’s like topic that I think you can see people’s faces changing, you know, when you talk about it, you know, and you know, they, it’s like, it’s, I think people, a lot of people have guilt about things they may have done. So I think there’s a lot of, you know, and of course people there’s Some people push pushbacks more strongly. They don’t want to hear what you have to say. And that’s, that’s fine. I mean, in academics, you want to be challenged. What you, what you’re saying, you want it to be challenged because that these kind of makes you better in terms of trying to present what you’re trying to present. But then there’s. There are people that, you know, if I were to present it at a Christian college, it’s probably more likely to, you know, it’ll be more acceptable. Feler Bose (28:25) More, you know, people might be like, hey, this is great, you know, kind of thing. So it’s. The reactions can be all over the place, depending on the audience and depending on, in a sense, also depending on people’s histories, personal histories. I think this plays a role and. Andrea Schwartz (28:39) I imagine in academic circles, you know, I grew up in the 60s and norms changed, and a lot of the people who lived as young people then and who are still alive have to see how things have changed. And a lot of them regret a lot of the things that they did. But when I talk about your last couple of chapters, it’s because, Feler, you actually opened my eyes to something that I had never considered. And, you know, anytime I come across something, it’s like, wow, I’ve just read this like a zillion times and I never saw it. You talk about the apparent contradiction between Genesis 1 on the sixth day, what God commands, and then Genesis 2 in terms of God’s restriction. It was a concept that I had never really considered before. And I’d like to give you an opportunity to share that because I actually think it’s vital to how we as Christian people will be in a position to educate others in terms of how important your thesis is. So do expound upon the apparent contradiction, which you don’t see as a contradiction at all, right? Feler Bose (29:52) So in Genesis 2, Adam is told by God, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whereas in Genesis 1, God tells Adam and Eve, you can eat from all the trees. And so, right, everything is food for you. And so that seems like a contradiction. And. Right. So, I mean, so the only way you can, you can kind of make this contradiction go away is the prohibition, right, to eat from the tree of the knowledge. And good evil was temporary. It is not a permanent prohibition. And God also tells Adam further, he doesn’t tell. He tells Adam. And then, which means that Adam had to have told his wife later, hey, we’re not supposed to eat from the street you know, it’s a temporary, but you’re not supposed to eat from it. But eventually we can eat from it. It’s kind of what Adam should have figured out. When I was in high school, I remember a teacher used to always get on the students, say, why doesn’t God want us to not want us to eat from the knowledge in the tree of good and evil, right? Does he not want us to know good and evil? Feler Bose (30:50) Does he just want us to be good, you know, be like robots? You know, it’s kind of what he was. His big criticism was. But then I realized the knowledge of good and evil is just being. That is being able to be a good judge. You know, it’s something that you gain with time. You know, Solomon, when he, when he became the ruler, he asked God basically to know how to judge the people, right? To know right and wrong, to know good and evil. And so knowing good and evil wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was a. It was something that Adam and Eve were supposed to learn over as they deal with the serpent, right? Maybe they would have dealt with the serpent multiple times, just like Jesus was tempted many times. The serpent might have come back again and again and kind of try to tempt them. And in the process, they would have kind of grown and matured and, you know, and that at some point, I guess God would have told him, hey, eat from this. You know, you can eat from this tree now. And so that was kind of the. Feler Bose (31:43) The point I was trying to make. And so for me, the idea of original sin was not they disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge. And good and evil is just that they were impatient. They wanted to eat from the tree in their own time, their own timeline, and they want to eat from it immediately. I mean, if you think about it, right, God wants us to, for example, how does it apply to us, right? I mean, God wants us to, for example, wait to have sex, don’t have sex until we get married, you know, but some people, God doesn’t condemn having sex. You know, he says you got to wait. And so a lot of people can a sense grab the fruit too soon or a lot of people want to get rich, right? They might steal, be patient, right? It might take you 20, 30 years to get wealthy or something by obeying God and so on. So I think that was kind of the point I was trying to make, that the sin was the sin of not being patient, you know, kind of grabbing something prematurely. And in a sense, I kind of come to the idea that the new Adam, Jesus Christ, I mean, his. Feler Bose (32:42) The restoration that’s happening to Christians is for us to start thinking long term, being patient, being self controlled in our actions. And so that’s kind of where I went with that topic, that chapter. Andrea Schwartz (32:53) Think of all the times and places where patience is elevated. In 1st Corinthians 13, the first description of love, which Jesus says elsewhere is fulfilling the law, is patience. And that patience has its work in people customarily. Anybody who’s read Rushdoony said Genesis 3. 5 is the desire to determine good and evil for yourself. And in your description and discussion on this, you point out that Adam and Eve were born or not born, were created physically mature, but that doesn’t mean they were intellectually mature, emotionally mature. And just the same way that a child is fully a child, you wouldn’t give a child the keys to the car and say, hey, go to the grocery store and pick up some stuff that we need. We see a process of maturation. And a lot of times kids get impatient and they do things. And you’re like, I never told you you could do that because you’re not ready. So instead of God doing what Satan indicated, he just doesn’t want competition. It was as a loving father. He wanted Adam and Eve to grow into the role that he had for them. That paradise or Eden was not the end of the line. Andrea Schwartz (34:12) I’ve heard it described as a pilot project so that then you could go into the entire world, right? Feler Bose (34:17) I mean, they, I mean, you know, got in the story of Adam and Eve. We learn about places where there’s gold and stuff, right? And all the stuff was way out there. You gotta get on the boat, get it, get in a, you know, maybe get on a boat and go down and, you know, find the gold and, you know, build an altar or something with it, you know, you know what I’m saying? So, yeah, I mean, it is something that he was supposed to learn and grow and mature and. And spread God’s kingdom, you know, but he, yeah, he got impatient, wanted to do his own timeline. Andrea Schwartz (34:45) And you cite examples how Abram had to learn patience, Joseph being in prison for 10 years, all. Even Jesus having to be patient with the people who were his people, his elect, that I think we undervalue patients in a world where you have a question, you can ask Siri or Alexa or Google it, and now you have an instant answer that built into this quote unquote progress we have is building impatience in people. Feler Bose (35:20) Yeah, it’s that I think that’s what unique about Christianity is this idea of patience, long suffering and self control and so on. I think the Bible, I think once you see the Adam and Eve story that way, it the whole, for me, scripture, you know, opened up in terms of trying to see what’s going on. I mean, for me it kind of made more scripturally made more sense to think about, you know, like every story. Yeah. Like you even pointed out in Corinthians about love being patient and so on. It’s, I think it’s a big part of the Christian walk that we learn and that impacts economic growth and prosperity. The idea of patience and long term thinking long term having longer time horizons and not expecting things to be done immediately. Right. I mean God is not a genie or something that if you do this, God is going to give us this right away. I mean, I’m not saying Christians don’t fall into the temptation. Right. We do see people saying, well, you know, if you give money to God, God will give it back right away. I mean it’s not like, well, God can do it in his own timing. Feler Bose (36:21) It’s not like, it’s not like we shouldn’t expect them to do it, you know, in our timing. So we get very impatient and I think scripture, yeah, like I said, is very clear. We got to think long term horizons into the future. Andrea Schwartz (36:33) When I was growing up Feler, it was not unusual for families to celebrate grandparents 50th anniversary, 60th anniversary. Well, my husband and I are coming up this year in our 50th and you should see the people’s look. The look on people’s faces is kind of like, oh my goodness, how do you do it? Well, nobody ever asked grandparents, how did you do it? Didn’t assume that everything was hunky dory. I like telling people, yeah, almost 50 years and some years were better than others. Right. That you have to be patient in the process. But not just your book, but certainly other books I’ve been reading stresses how important marriage and family is to the point that you would almost have to think that the communist knew exactly what would succeed in terms of people’s relationship to God and society and sought to undermine it whole cloth. Feler Bose (37:29) Right, right. I mean, I guess when you could say you can think about it when God judges a nation. Right. And let’s say we impose communism in America, certainly a very quick way to destroy the country. I mean it’s, it will be very pleasant. So yeah, let’s hope you don’t come to that point in society and you know, I’m hopeful that the United States, that we have more people that are, you know, whether Christianity is making an impact in changing people’s lives to this idea of patience and self control and long time horizons and so on. Andrea Schwartz (37:59) So for the listeners, it’s. The book is entitled Sexual Freedom and Its Impact on Economic Growth and Prosperity. The author is my guest today, Feler Bose. In closing, I would like to ask you this. You’re not presupposing somebody reads your book and then says, oh, I should stop being sexually promiscuous so that I can have a better portfolio. You’re not discounting the fact that the Holy Spirit is that person of the Godhead that’s going to change a person so that rather than being impatient and going for quick gratification, that they’ll change. So talk a little bit about that. Feler Bose (38:43) Yeah, I mean, you know, if somebody reads the book and says, you know, I gotta stop committing adultery or something, I mean, that’s great. I mean, I think that’ll be certainly heading the right direction. But you know, I, you know, like the story of Abraham, I think that I highlighted in the book. You know, it talks about a multi generational perspective. I mean, you can’t, certain things may not happen in your generation. Right. I mean there’s a lot of brokenness you may have to work through that hopefully the next generation does not have to work through. And so the prosperity that you might see, your portfolio, so to speak, might occur in the next generation and not in your generation. But you got to be patient for that. You got to let God work it out and not rush things. You know, I’ve known people who become Christians who start giving and so on in this is in India where I grew up and you can see immediate turn around in their financial status and so on. Andrea Schwartz (39:32) The Bible says we’re not going to be able to outrun his blessings. And I love that picture because no matter how fast you run and you might be a fast runner, God’s going to beat you in terms of blessings to you. Feler Bose (39:45) Right? Right. Yeah. Ultimately it’s in his time and his, you know how he does it. Because sometimes you’re not ready for the blessings, maybe. You know what I’m saying? Andrea Schwartz (39:53) Yeah. Well, I read it and I’m hoping this book will be read especially by Christian homeschooling families who often have to, quote, unquote, sacrifice financially or get derided because they’re denying their children full expression. But, and this is something I purposely want to not discuss at length to get people to read your book, your whole chapter on Kinsey. It’s really an indictment against nothing strict stood against how all aspects of American society changed when the Kinsey report was accepted as truth without being challenged. So what would you say to people who have already embraced this idea that God’s word is central? What encouragement would you give them for individuals? Feler Bose (40:41) I think we need to be faithful to what scripture says about sexual morality. And you know, and like, and like you said, you know, that impacts, that’ll impact us. I mean for the better. Being sexually immoral has lots of problems. People dealing with guilt and you know, disease and all these other problems that come with sexual immorality. And so I think being faithful to your spouse, I mean there’s a lot of peace of mind and all that is important. I mean in terms of economic growth and prosperity also not just for the individual, but, but if more and more people in the society live the scriptural injunction to on marriage and so on, then we will see society prosper. And in fact, I think in my book also I highlight a story that in India there were some, the Brahmins, the priestly caste, that they were curious as to why the British, a small country, an island nation, was able to conquer a lot of the world. And, and the, the priest in India they came to the conclusion is because British followed monogamy. This isn’t the 8, this is a study, this is a observation in the 1800s because of the health district, marriage standards and monogamy that resulted in England going out and conquering the world. Feler Bose (41:56) And so I think that is for our children, us being faithful and our children continue being faithful and so on. I think we should be able to get to the commanding heights, so to speak of the America. I mean, why not, right? Why shouldn’t Christians be running things in this country? Andrea Schwartz (42:12) Yes, I’ll end off with saying this, that knowing Rushdoony and reading Rushdoony, I’ve read probably all his books and then I had the opportunity to interact with him. He would always emphasize that he is just scratching the surface that the idea was that every area of life and thought needed to be subject to God’s word. And you’re a great example. You didn’t think you have gotten to the depth of it completely, but you started and said nobody’s talking about this and why shouldn’t somebody who has a biblical world in life view talk about this? And so I applaud your work. I hope people will read your book. Are there other ways for people to keep up with what it is you’re writing, doing, speaking that you could share with us. Feler Bose (43:01) Like, a lot of my research is published in academic journals, so I’m not sure how useful it is in terms of trying to, you know, if you like that kind of stuff, you’re more than welcome to read my other, other topics that I worked on. I know that, you know, I’m guessing you’re putting this podcast up at some point to make it available. So I’m, you know, I have, I’ll be talking to people. There’s someone who has invited me on there to talk an X, you know, in spaces about the book. So I’ll be talking. I know about the book. You know, I don’t know. You know, whatever God opens up, you know, I know that some universities have asked me to come and talk about it. So those are the places I generally would talk about. I mean, if somebody wants me to talk at a convention or something, I’m more than happy to come. Andrea Schwartz (43:46) And how would they reach you? Feler Bose (43:48) They can if they just type my name on online. You know, my university contact information is. Will pop up. They can email me at my university bosef@iu.edu. IU stands for Indiana University. Andrea Schwartz (44:04) Well, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed your book. I enjoyed talking to you about your book and I really encourage other people you can imagine. Get it on Amazon. Feler Bose (44:15) Yes, it’s on Amazon. Walmart. I think there’s some other places you might find it cheaper, but it’s. Yeah, it’s. It’s available online in a bunch of places. Andrea Schwartz (44:23) All right. And once again, the title Sexual Freedom and its Impact on Economic Growth and Prosperity by Feler Bose. Thank you so much for spending time. Feler Bose (44:31) With me today and thank you for having me here. Andrea Schwartz (44:34) Outofthequestionpodcast@gail.com is how you reach us and we look forward to talking with you next time. Thanks for listening to out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit Chalcedon.edu…

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324: When Does the Christian Receive Power?