June 30, 2021

EP259: Are All Sins Equal? / What Would a Biblical Prison System Look Like? / Why The 2nd Amendment is Absolutely First and Rationally About Stopping Tyranny

50 minutes

On This Episode:

INDEPENDENCE DAY THOUGHT (0:00-7:26)

Happy Independence Day, all! Every year, I try to connect the people that celebrate the US totally uncritically and those that struggle to celebrate it at all. We are both the greatest experiment for human flourishing in the history of the planet AND a place with deep flaws -- all at the same time. We can, and should, recognize all those truths simultaneously.

If you live in the US, you live better and more opulently than 99.9999% of all the humans that have ever lived on this earth. You could take the kings and queens of antiquity, bring them to 2021 America, and they would think they were in heaven. We can choose to be grateful for our place compared to all of human history, or we can choose to compare the US to a fantasy land that doesn't exist and be dejected. It's really our choice.

DEGREES OF SIN (7:26-27:00)

Are all sins equal? Do Christians improperly focus on certain kinds of sin in the culture and ignore others? These questions are worth exploring. Using a full Bible hermenuetic, we find that, while all sin is eternally damnable before a holy God, not all sins are considered equal. I'll build that out for you.

BIBLICAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE (27:00-42:36)

A listener sent me a podcast that developed the idea that prisons are unbiblical. It didn't win me all the way over, but it required me to think about our broken and often irrational penal system. Our prison system is out of control, often dehumanizing to the criminal, not restorative to the victim, and produces an alarmingly high recidivism rate.

This segment is heavy on itemizing the problems but also has some ideas for solutions near the end.

THE PRESIDENT'S "YOU NEED F-15s AND NUKES" TO RESIST THE GOVERNMENT COMMENT (42:36-End)

Of course, the president's comment here was bizarre and dumb, but this notion is common among certain critics of the 2nd amendment. I'll explain why it's a terrible argument against the 2nd Amendment's first purpose, which was defending the states and citizenry against a potentially tyrannical federal government.

...more