The Conquering Truth

In the war over defining what is good and what is evil, words matter a great deal. In this episode, we look at what God’s word says about truth and the power of words. We’ll discuss how the war over words has been central to every major cultural battle of the last hundred years and how abortion, climate change , gay marriage, and transgender rights, were all fought and won by changing the definition of words. We’ll talk about why the tactic is so successful, how it generally works, and some of the key ways that we can fight back against it.  

Abolishing or significantly reforming the police has been a topic of serious and contentious discussion in 2021 with very little common ground to be found between the opposing sides. In this episode, we attempt to answer some basic questions and answer from a biblical perspective. Are police even biblical? Should they be abolished? Whose job is it to protect people in a free society? How did the police come to exist and to be accepted in modern culture? Whose job is it to make sure that the law is followed? How did we end up where we are as a society, and is there even a way to imagine a world where police are not necessary?

"Let's Go Brandon!” has become a popular rallying cry among the political right. How did a euphemism for an obscene phrase directed specifically at President Biden come to be seen as acceptable speech among Christians? Is it because Donald Trump’s love of coarse language had such a big impact on our culture and our standards or do Americans just love crude discourse? For those who care about these things, is there an objective standard for how Christians should speak?

We all know the story of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, and how they celebrated their first year, a year of loss and hardship, by pouring out their hearts in thankful worship to God. But do we really understand the nature of thanksgiving itself (the act of worship, not the holiday)? In this episode, we try to talk about the modern disconnect we seem to have with feeling and expressing gratitude. We’ll talk about how central gratefulness is to Christianity, how being involved in the work of God by laboring for his church and for the brethren enables us to be grateful in a deeper way, and how it is the work of the Holy Spirit in God’s people that causes and enables us to offer our lives to God as a thankful sacrifice.

Timecodes

For the past two years we’ve all heard the mantra, “Listen to the Experts!” It’s well past the time to ask if this is appropriate, and to discuss the right and wrong ways for Christians to follow and think about experts. Should expertise be used as a baseball bat to keep people in line? Are experts lofty beings who cannot be questioned and whose word is law? Is expertise even real? In this episode we discuss the nature of expertise itself, and how God created it for a purpose. We talk about how we should think about experts, how we can use them without giving them more authority than they should have, and how we can answer those who try to use experts to control us. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about how expertise works and exists within the church and what it looks like when things get out of balance.

Whether it’s President Biden’s forthcoming vaccine mandate or Governor Ron DeSantis’ signed law that Florida’s government and private institutions cannot require proof of vaccination, it seems clear that both sides of American politics have embraced greater government involvement in its citizen’s lives. Do Americans just want to be controlled? Do we want a tyrant to rule over us to enforce our views on everyone else? In this episode we discuss these issues and how Christians should think about these things.

This year is the 500th anniversary of the Diet of Worms - where Luther stood on God's word against Emperor Charles V. This week, we bring you the messages from our annual Reformation Day celebration. For more information on Reformation Day, visit www.celebratereformationday.com/

What does Halloween's rise in popularity say about our country?

We tackle the Big Tech debate - free speech, Section 230, the Facebook whistleblower, and how the church should respond.

We start with Gen Milley's phone calls and end up discussing civilian control of the military, standing armies, and total depravity.