How We View Morality (#1008)

10 Comments

1. I think you need to examine how Presidents Biden and Obama stepped beyond legal parameters. One glaring example is mandating that millions of Americans receive an experimental substance injected into their veins or lose their jobs. Also the censorship that is now being revealed to have been forced on media companies in the Covid era and beyond,, which is much more dangerous to civil liberty than anything Trump has done.
   I’m not MAGA and disapprove of many things the President has said. But your accusations in this podcast seem unbalanced.

   • This podcast was not about how much worse Trump is than Biden was. I have lots of issues with Biden’s presidency. Perhaps we weren’t clear enough, but this podcast was about the unwavering support for Trump from those who profess to follow Jesus when his actions and demeanor are the polar opposite of the God we profess to love.

     I read this yesterday in the Tangle newsletter, a publication that seeks to find the common ground between left and right:

     If, on the day Trump was inaugurated, I had warned readers that in a few months law enforcement officers would be rappelling from helicopters like soldiers into civilian apartment buildings in Chicago; the military would be extrajudicially killing Venezuelans for alleged drug dealing; Americans would be getting arrested while being falsely accused of being here illegally; the Justice Department would be prosecuting the president’s political foes at his direction; and legal U.S. residents would be getting arrested, detained, and deported for protected speech; I would have been accused of having a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yet nine months into this presidency, all of those things are happening. This isn’t hyperbolic fear-mongering — it isn’t sensationalist, or exaggerated. It’s literally just a list of the things the president has done

     That said, I disagree with your conclusion that the censorship regarding COVID is worse than anything Trump has done. Ask CBS, a few colleges, law fims, former government officials now under indictment for daring to disagree with the president. Fear and intimidation is the order of the day, not respectful disagreement and attempts to work for a common good that benefits all Americans.

2. Wrong spectrum?
   It seems to me there are two spectrums that come into play in our lives everyday…the horizontal spectrum of left/right dealing in binary black/white, wrong/right, us/them… the kingdom of man. There is also the kingdom of god… the vertical spectrum dealing in love, restoration, and non-separation. The kingdom of man privileges intellect and belief; the kingdom of god, relationship and experience.
   When the kingdom of man operates within its own boundaries without being governed by the kingdom of god, we make use of right-handed power manipulating the powers that be to do our bidding to bring about the kingdom of god. I’m speaking from personal experience now…using man’s kingdom tactics to bring about the kingdom of god cannot nor will not succeed. We cannot end in love if the means towards love are forceful and coercive.
   So, what’s the answer? Love…simply, love. Not a self centered love that focuses on my group and its views of right and wrong. No, true love looks towards the well-being of others. This doesn’t mean we no longer fall somewhere on the horizontal spectrum, it means we no longer allow this spectrum to determine how we see and treat the “other.” There are still societal questions that need to be resolved by us all, but love must take the lead even when we disagree with those pushing their agenda from their post on the horizontal spectrum. Love won’t give us the answers to these issues, but love will give us a firm stance from which to answer them. If we claim to follow Jesus, love has to be the lens through which we see all creation and cooperate with God as God works towards its culmination when all things are subjected to himself, and God becomes “all and in all.” We must trust love for love is of God, and love never fails.

   • Amen. Without love, we will not be able to navigate the rancor that has been forced upon us by both of our political parties.

3. I appreciate your discussion and complimentary pieces on this topic. I serve on the board and volunteer for a local Christian charity which provides food and shelter to those in crisis. Pennsylvania has been without a budget for four months. The reasons are similar to the federal situation. Unfortunately, the state has basically stopped making payments which has significantly impacted food distribution programs such as ours. The poor are being used as bargaining chips in a game of political chicken. Part of me says as Christians, we should not be dependent on government support in carrying out Christ ordained ministry to the poor. Should we accept government payments? I apologize if this is an off topic comment. Recently, this was part of my daily Bible study. I was awakened by the reference to us as His “masterpieces” created in Jesus to do the good works He planned for us long ago. If only we would seek, listen, and obey more often, we might not be in the mess we find ourselves currently. Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT – 8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago

4. Before getting to far into this, I want to say that I am not a die-hard Trumpster. I have never attended a Trump rally. In the lead up to the 2016 election, he was not even my third or fourth choice. But he won the nomination and the election; and in spite of (and maybe partly because of) all the lawfare during Biden’s term, he won re-election with stronger results than before. I want to add that my own family is politically divided; out of ten adults in 3 generations, maybe 4 of us voted for Trump last November. At least we haven’t excommunicated anybody on either side–we still talk to each other and get together at times, in spite of our political differences–I know some families are not doing that.
   It’s also worth remembering that human beings are not going to be perfect in this life –maybe in Heaven, but not here. We all have flaws and we all fail at times. And that applies to politicians, too, of all parties.
   Some years ago Barack Obama spoke about “the arc of history.” One thing that moves in an arc is a pendulum–it goes one way, then the other. And as a lifelong student of history, I can tell you that history often does act like a pendulum. Right now we are swinging back. It is hard for some people. (It was also hard for some other people when the pendulum was going the other way–including the families who had loved ones murdered by illegal immigrants.)
   The immigration laws the Trump Administration is enforcing have been on the books for many years, some going back about a century. If you don’t like an existing law, the proper answer is to get Congress to change the law. To ignore the existing law, skip enforcing it, and even openly encourage people to violate it, is a violation of an official’s oath of office, and it encourages violations in other areas.
   Right now we are in the early stages of the pendulum’s swinging back. I would not be surprised if things get a bit easier and more merciful after a few years. I’m afraid the opposition of some politicians (Pritzker, Newsom, and others) may delay that.
   Some of what I’m saying here may sound harsh. But we live in a fallen world–Jesus has not come back yet. And some things in this life are hard and may seem unjust. And it didn’t take a dozen sins for Adam and Eve to get expelled from Eden–it only took one. God, through Jesus, has provided a way back into His presence. But government, and especially politicians, are not God. For now, we have to live in this world.

5. On Retirement and President Trump

   Retirement just means to stop doing things that you get paid for. It doesn’t make it necessary to stop being fruitful (for free).

   On another note…

   President Trump has no intention of governing either by God’s love or His law. He is presiding as a CEO. His objective is to make America profitable by eliminating competition for jobs, drug addiction, crime, wasteful spending on philosophical issues, etc.

   Christians who believe he is doing Christian work (or even that he SHOULD be doing Christian work) are misguided. Are we supposed to love him? Of course not! How many Apple employees loved Steve Jobs? Followers of Jesus will not be “MAGA Christians”, but will walk in love with Jesus in their personal lives toward those marginalized and hurting around them (people they meet and know in person).

   Pray for peace as the early believers did, but trust God for that peace rather than put your heart and money into support of some caesar and his senate. Early Christians had nothing to do with politics, because they had no sense of obligation to turn justice into a national industrial enterprise, nor did they hold themselves responsible for every wrong done in the empire!

6. Blessings as you folks navigate the loss of one of your dogs. As an owner of six English Setters currently and many more over the years I relate to the sense of loss and adapting to the new reality. I also very much appreciated this podcast as it brought together thoughts and sentiments that I have had since I first did a deep dive into who President Trump was after he descended the escalator and announced his candidacy for president in 2016. The other element in my opinion that contributes to support vs. non-support and is very much reflected in the comments thus far is how much all of us have been impacted, manipulated, controlled and are victims in our daily lives of algorithms. To not understand how our thinking has been been conditioned by this phenomenon is to miss how our lives have been/are being manipulated.

7. Hi Wayne & Kyle. This is the first episode I’ve listened to and I’m pretty sure I’m not your regular audience. I left the church in 2010 after I could no longer reconcile the Christ my community was following with the Christ I knew. I’ve watched that divide grow impossibly deep since 2016, leaving me on the opposite side of a chasm from many people I love. Just tonight, I was trying to find another avenue to reach my pastor uncle, and the question that came to mind was, “Are your politics defined by what you love or what you hate?” The Christ I know balanced both, but Kyle hit it on the head — I feel like Paul has become the messiah of modern Christians. Paul’s ideology, both before and after the road to Damascus, was defined by the things he despised.

   Oddly enough, I found this podcast about an hour ago because I had a dream about a mutual friend of ours. I googled him just to make sure he’s fine (he is) and someone had mentioned him in the comments on another episode.

   Thank you for this conversation. I’m still pretty wary to listen further because I’m not used to agreeing with other Christians anymore. It’s been a very spiritually isolating 10 years.

   • I think many of us here would be remiss to call ourselves “Christians” because of what that means in the political and religious sectors, but we are people who are learning to follow Jesus as best we can and live as he did in the world with love and compassion overflowing from our hearts for all. Thanks for your comment.

     I wouldn’t agree with your statement about Paul, however. He talked about “being all things to all people,” and that “love fulfills the whole law.” So, I’m not sure what you mean by things he despised. After all, he considered himself apart from Christ “the chiefest of sinners.”

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