Does Jesus Care About Politics? Why Policy Matters

Knight & Rose Show — Wintery Knight and Desert Rose

00:00

Does Jesus Care About Politics? Why Policy Matters

June 5, 2022

Knight & Rose ShowWintery Knight and Desert Rose

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss how policies affect how Christians live. We compared free market economies and government monopoly economies. We discussed policies that affect fatherlessness. We discussed how health care, education and energy policy affect Christians. We compared government-run welfare spending vs private voluntary charity. We discussed how to evaluate political candidates. We discussed legislation pushed by the Biden administration that affects Christians and Christian priorities.

Please subscribe, like, comment, and share.

Show notes:

https://winteryknight.com/2022/06/05/knight-and-rose-show-episode-8-does-jesus-care-about-politics

Subscribe to the audio podcast here: https://knightandrose.podbean.com/

Audio RSS feed: https://feed.podbean.com/knightandrose/feed.xml

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@knightandroseshow

Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/knightandroseshow

Odysee: https://odysee.com/@KnightAndRoseShow

Music attribution: Strength Of The Titans by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5744-strength-of-the-titans License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Transcript

[Music] Welcome to the Knight and Rose Show, where we discuss practical ways of living out an authentic Christian worldview. Today's topic is, "Does Jesus Care About Politics?" I'm Wintery Knight. And I'm Desert Rose.

Welcome, Rose. So this is your topic. What made you think about proposing this as a topic? Well, I've been particularly interested in public policy for a long time.

This was my undergraduate degree, and I have experience working in Washington, DC, in policy. Wow. I was listening to the podcast of an influential Christian recently, who was talking about how Jesus doesn't care about your politics.

He didn't get involved in policy. If you think he would take your side on any sort of issue, you're wrong. He probably wouldn't.

Christians just need to love people like Jesus did. He just loved people. We just need to love people.

Policy and politics is divisive, so we just need to not make it important. Yeah. So what do you think? Do you agree with him, or what do you think Christians should think about politics? I absolutely disagree with him.

We are not, as Christians, called to say a prayer and then continue living our lives as if the world around us doesn't matter. We are to be salt and light to the world. We are to have a Christian worldview that impacts every area of our lives.

And political decisions, policies in particular, have tremendous, significant consequences for people, people who are made in the image of God, who are valuable to God. And so this is something that affects, you know, a single policy can affect millions of people, if not more. And so I do believe that there's something God cares about, something that we ought to care about.

I care about this. These policies affect me. I'm very determined and definite in my Christian life plan.

I'm always talking about how I want to bring Christian speakers to the university. I want to introduce apologetics, you know, materials into the church. I am right now, you know, mentoring Christians with recommending books.

Some of them buy the books on their own and some of them I buy the books for them. But there are actually policies that influence this. Like, for example, in my office, I was working for a company one time that was like a platinum partner of the Human Rights Campaign.

And that's the largest gay rights lobbying group in America. And so often they would make this part of your performance review or my manager would bring me a little rainbow colored pen. So any kind of like rules like that, that restrict free speech affect me, you know, in my office, you know, whether I get to be myself and keep my job.

And speaking of job, you know, buying these books for people and bringing these speakers to campus like Jay Warner Wallace and Frank Turek, that costs money. So I need to be able to find work when I need work and keep most of what I earn. And in addition to that, there's just basic stuff.

Like, suppose I am going to a Christian event, you know, in downtown and there are criminals around. Am I allowed to defend myself? Am I allowed to carry a concealed weapon if I'm trained? Am I allowed to do that? Or do we just let, you know, criminals run wild? Mm hmm. Yeah.

And you mentioned purchasing books for people and bringing in speakers on apologetics and such issues. And that reminds me of how poor economic policies over the past year or so have caused a great deal of inflation. And I've actually had to cut my giving a significant amount this past year, which is really hard, breaks my heart.

I love to give to Christian ministry. But, you know, it's not as if inflation comes like unexpectedly for unknown reasons when the wind blows or something like that. I mean, we know the policy.

No, there's policy causes for this. Right, exactly. And so, you know, I've traveled all over the world and I've seen the way laws impact people and their ability to live out the Christian life, their ability to hear the gospel in the first place and things like that.

I mean, speaking of inflation, you know, in Venezuela, inflation got so out of control from the socialist policies of their president that their money became so worthless that it was actually worth more to make origami out of art, out of the money than to use the money to purchase anything. And so, I actually have a swan made out of 500 Bolivar bills, Bolivar is their currency, you know, and 200 Bolivar bills and such, a thousand Bolivar bills, because this swan thing that's like, you know, three inches tall is worth more than all of those hundreds and hundreds of bills that took it to make it. And I mean, not only that, but you know, in Venezuela, people are eating their pets and their zoo animals in order to survive for, yes, for food.

They are selling their body for food. If you think Jesus doesn't care about women having to choose between selling their body or eating, I'm going to disagree with you there. You know, in the Middle East, I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East and becoming a Christian can be a death sentence.

And so, this not only affects the security of Christians, I mean, that's the least of the concerns. The reality is that very few people in the Middle East get to actually hear the gospel as a result of this policy. And so, the Christian worldview has not taken root there at all.

Much of the Middle East still operates on seventh century values because the nations are Islamic. And so, the consequences of that are tremendously harmful again to people who God cares about. In North Korea, owning a Bible is a capital offense.

And as far as we can tell, Christianity does not exist there. The government surveys everybody's conversation. They have complete control over every single word and aspect of people's lives.

And so, this is impacting, again, the ability for people to hear the truth. - Yeah, that's a really bad case about the Bibles being capital offense. But even in Western nations like Finland, I heard that there were some Finnish politician who had written something in support of traditional Christian values and traditional Christian views on marriage and sexuality.

And she got brought up on criminal charges for hate speech. So, surprisingly, she won her initial case. And what I heard, the last I heard was, the prosecutor is appealing in order to make these charges stick, which I think is just crazy.

- Wow. Yeah, I read about that case initially. Wow.

Yeah, and so, in China also, there's a social credit system. So, if you don't proclaim the message of the Chinese government and agree with what they say, then you're gonna be stifled from being able to send your kids to decent universities. You're gonna be prohibited from going into grocery stores.

I mean, there are serious, serious consequences. And so, again, even though in China there has been over the past few decades an underground church, the policies are greatly stifling the ability of people to hear the gospel. I met a man on an airplane who was shocked to hear the gospel and he wanted to know why he had never heard this before.

But with the kind of online censorship they have, with the government regulation of the churches, I'm not surprised that he had never heard the gospel even though he was about 45 years old. - Yeah, this reminds me of what happened in Canada recently where there were these trucker rallies in the capital Ottawa. And what happened is the government, possibly with the use of an external hacker that they hired because the RCMP had worked with this guy before.

I'm not sure about that. They actually were able to find out who the donors to the campaign were, and they froze all their bank accounts. This is what you mean, I think, by social credit system.

If you do anything against the government, we will shut down your ability to function. And they impounded all of the trucker vehicles as well. How are you supposed to earn a livelihood if they take your truck? - And how are you supposed to purchase food if they don't give you access to your bank accounts? - Yeah, that should be a concern.

Christians should be thinking, "Wow, what if the secular left decides to do this to me?" - Yeah, and we may not be there quite yet in America, but we seem to be well on our way with Christian business owners being dragged into court for refusing to celebrate certain lifestyles, not be a part of their celebrations and such. So, this could cause big problems. Imagine if there were fewer to no Christians owning businesses, running businesses around the US, and what kind of impact that would have on people's ability to hear the truth.

- Yeah, so let me summarize what we've seen so far. So, you heard this podcast, the guy, it's a philosopher guy. I feel I should say that because he, I always criticize him a little bit for being disconnected from the real world and not all cases, but he comes out and he says Christians shouldn't care about politics.

And I really have to think, does this guy have a life plan that is affected by policy the way you and I do? Because that seems to be why we care about politics. It affects other people and it affects us. And then my other question is, does this guy know about what laws and policies are doing to Christian experiences like becoming a Christian, living as a Christian, having a family? Does he know all about that? Or does he just not care? - Yeah, I mean, I have to say that I seriously doubt he's been to 30 or so developing world countries like I've been to and seen the day to day results of policies.

I mean, he did say that he would make an exception for something like if we were in Nazi Germany, but- - We don't wanna get there. - We don't wanna get there. Yes, exactly.

- I seriously question whether this guy has ever had a job where he's been hauled in front of HR for offending a coworker or whether he's had, like I said, a rainbow pin pushed at him by his boss and said, "Put this on." I just think he just doesn't know what's going on and he doesn't have an interesting enough life where he's exposed to these kinds of issues where he's thinking, "How do I donate to other people and where did my money go?" Maybe he doesn't even have an income. Essentially, he pays taxes. Anyway, let me talk about this.

So one thing I learned from economics is that when I'm thinking about my Christian life plan, I can't do everything myself. I'm often gonna have to rely on partners. For example, right now we're recording a podcast, so I have a computer that I did not make.

Somebody gave me that and I'm using internet so that I can connect with you and make this podcast. So there are always cases where I'm gonna be purchasing products and services in order to help me achieve my Christian goals. So I wanted to ask you this.

Do you think that things work better in a free market economy or do you think things would work better if the government ran all of the computer production, the internet production, the car production, everything? Which is better? Yeah. Well, I mean, just think about when the government has a monopoly on a product or a service. When there's no competition, there's no incentive to make things better.

There's no incentive to be creative or to try new things. People only have one option to go to. There's no incentive to be the best at what you do.

So think about how much you love going to the DMV. I hate it. Yeah, exactly.

So that's a government-run monopoly. You can't go get your driver's license some place else if the DMV is an absolute disaster. Think about what a disaster the post office is as well.

It's government-run and people are gonna get their paycheck no matter how they do, what they do, whether your package arrives or not. And that's government-run. Last I read about the post office, there were $4 billion in debt while private sector competitors were actually thriving.

It's just better to deal with private companies. You see the reviews. You can choose a different provider if you don't like them.

And if they tell you, "Well, you're a Christian, so we're not gonna serve you," then you just go, "Okay, fine. I'll take my business next door to someone else." So we really care about this. Christians really have a lot of freedom when they have choices about who to work for and who to buy from.

Right, exactly. Yeah. And even with Amazon becoming, in a lot of ways, a monopoly, we're starting to see as they control so much of the arena, they are starting to impose rules like you can't publish a book that doesn't line up with our views.

I switched all my book buying to ChristianBook.com and other places like that. Mm-hmm, yeah, excellent. Encounter books wherever I can go to get the books I want.

I just stop buying from Amazon. But still, it's a nicer experience to buy when there's reviews. Right.

So what I'm saying is the private sector is better than a government-run monopoly, and it gives me options about how I'm gonna achieve my goals as a Christian. Yeah, and competition within the private sector is even better than a private sector monopoly. But then a government- Oh, I agree.

I'm against those two. Yeah. But so, yeah.

Let's talk about what it's like to have people always talk about, "Oh, I want universal healthcare. I want my healthcare to be like Canada's healthcare." Oh, goodness. The government pays for everything, and it's free.

I just wrote a post about this, so this is on my mind. I wonder how many people know what free means in Canada in the healthcare system. It's terrible.

According to the study that I blogged about from the Fraser Institute, a family of two with two kids is paying $15,000 a year in money just for healthcare, not even all their taxes. So it comes up to like 45% tax rate. Anyway, if you're a Christian living in Canada and you're living with a single-payer healthcare system, you're paying for abortions.

Your taxes are paying for abortions because the single-payer healthcare system provides them. They provide sex change surgery on kids. Do Christians agree with that? Whether you agree or not, you're paying for it.

They provide IVF to single moms. So do you think there should be a father in the home? Tough luck. If you're living in Canada, you're paying for fatherless kids.

You can clearly see that. Oh, and I forgot. In the UK, they have the National Health Service, which is another government-run healthcare system.

I remember blogging about this case about little Alfie, who was like this kid that the parents took to a hospital and they said, "Elp, our kid's sick." And the hospital said, "Not only do we not want to help your kid, but we're going to kidnap the kid and put police around the hospital to prevent you from taking the kid home because we're not going to operate. We're not letting you take the kid to another country to have the kid operated on there." Italy had offered to take the kid and performed the necessary healthcare, but the NHS didn't want to look bad. Right, exactly.

So they told the parents, "You can't even take the kid home." Yeah. And so in single-payer healthcare systems, the government decides who gets treatment and who doesn't, like the example of Alfie, exactly. Most governments, I would venture to say all governments that have monopolies are not exactly upholding and advancing Christian priorities.

And so in the UK, they're prioritizing breast enlargements over cancer treatments for older people. So if some 15-year-old wants a breast enlargement or wants to transform to a different gender or something like that, then that's a priority for them. But if a 50-year-old whose utilitarian value to the system is mostly over, because they're not really young anymore, then they're going to deny, they may deny or hold off delay cancer treatment.

We have a friend actually who's in that situation, who was in that situation who had to wait months and months and months to be seen and taken seriously. It's just insane. Christian should have a choice of healthcare providers that match up with our values so that we're not subsidizing abortion and coverage for things that we disagree with.

Don't agree with. Exactly. And the same goes true not just for healthcare, but also for education.

Government-run public schools push things like BLM and critical race theory, transgenderism, things like this that Christians do not agree with that are not in line with biblical values or beliefs. Yeah, Christians should definitely support vouchers or school choice of some form, because if the schools aren't working for you to raise your kids for your boss, if you had kids and you're trying to educate them a certain way to benefit your Christian worldview, and those schools aren't working for you, you need to take your money and you need to take that out of there and get something that works. Homeschooling, private schools, Christian schools, something that achieves the goals that you have for your life.

Yeah, and Thomas Sowell has written an excellent book about, I think it came out about a year or two ago, on school choice and why that's really a critical way forward for helping minority communities, for helping the poor. And that's absolutely true. Yeah, it's alarming when I see the Biden administration colluding with the FBI to have parents who disagree with teaching critical race theory or something labeled domestic terrorists.

Surely Christian parents should be interested in that and want policies and laws in place that allow them to get the education they want for their kids instead of being trapped into this government-run monopoly. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that right now with parents finally waking up and fighting back. Speaking of parents, have you noticed that Christianity tends to be passed on better to children from parents when there's a married home with two parents and it's very stable? Yeah, I mean, I've seen studies on this.

Yeah, I actually have blogged on a Swiss study that shows that children are more likely to accept Christianity when there's a father in the home. So if there's a mother who's introducing it to them, and even if there's two parents in the home, they seem to prefer to accept it from the father than the mother for some reason. And I've also seen this father business is also related to some work that I've seen Dr. Paul Vitsdue.

He's like a psychologist and he did a bunch of work showing that prominent atheist people like Nietzsche and so on, their atheism was related to the fact that their father was either absent from the home or defective or treated them very badly. So it seems like for better or worse, Christianity is related. Oh, Jennifer Roback Morris, the economist, she's also talked about how not having a mother in the home leads to children not developing empathy.

And if you don't have empathy, then you may struggle to understand why you should treat people well. It's like the basis for morality. So the reason I'm saying all this is because I'm saying Christianity is wed, I think, to the family.

And so we should care about policies that try to break up the family or have kids separated from their biological parents. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, there are laws and policies that provide incentives to separate children from one or both of their biological parents. We should absolutely care about these types of incentives being overturned, not being in place.

We need to care about incentivizing parents staying together and raising their children. What policies lead to this breakup? Do you know, can you name them? Yeah, so a few examples would be no-fault divorce. 69% of divorces are initiated by women.

And it's more like 80% among women who have gone to college. So when women can divorce their husbands because the husbands aren't making them feel emotionally tingly anymore, and the fathers are forced out of the home and mothers are raising children alone, this has a massive impact on the children and their welfare. But we're incentivizing that behavior by paying mothers to raise their kids alone and get the fathers out of there.

I've helped refugees fill out forms for welfare, and we had to check whether or not the father was in the home. And if they checked that the father was not in the home, they would have received a lot more money. That's insane.

And so, you know, a fatherlessness leads to a lot of social problems. It leads to poverty. It leads to early pregnancy for daughters who were not raised with a father in the home.

It leads to greater incidence of depression and crime, lower levels of education. There are all sorts of problems related to fatherlessness. And so if we are incentivizing fatherlessness, we are not upholding Christian values.

Yeah, this is gold. I wonder if most Christians even think, what are our laws and policies saying to women about how children should be raised? And to me, if you're paying people to conceive and raise fatherless children, that's a huge problem because those kids are facing not only are they probably not going to have the Christianity passed on because the father is gone, if indeed he was even chosen for his Christian views, but they have all these other ills that you mentioned as well. Okay, what do you think about this? I've heard people say this, once people become Christians, good political views will follow.

So we don't need to talk about politics. We should just focus on the gospel. I disagree with this.

Becoming a Christian does not give you the knowledge about policies to get the results that you want. Becoming a Christian and studying theology may help us to understand what good outcomes look like and what evil outcomes look like, but it doesn't inform us about how to get there, about the best way to get the results. And so policies that sound like they will help the poor, like raising the minimum wage, actually cause higher unemployment because employers can't pay, they don't have unlimited money.

They don't grow money trees in their backyards. Right. Exactly.

And so if they have to pay everybody more money to work for them, then they're going to let go of the people who are not worth that amount, the people with the least skills. And I wanted to say, with the single mother welfare, a lot of my friends are going to say, "Oh, so let's say a woman was being beaten or something like that. You don't think she should be helped.

That's so heartless." And that is absolutely not the case. But again, we have to think about what is the best way forward. And women who are in that situation do need help.

They do need support, but that support is best when it comes from the family, when it comes from the church, when it comes from the local community, or the level of help that is closest to her so that there's some accountability in place, there's skills development, and there's not just a, "Here's your check." We're going to talk about that more later. Jay Richards is one of our favorite people. He calls this the principle of subsidiarity, just for people to learn a new term.

The principle of subsidiarity is part of free market economics, which Jay Richards loves, and so do I. And what it is, is that people need to try to solve problems at the lowest level possible. So you try to, if it's a family problem, the family should solve it. Otherwise, the church should solve it, or maybe the city should solve it.

But you don't escalate everything to the federal government. And federalism is one of the reasons why America has been so prosperous. Okay.

So you mentioned some of these policies that sound good, like minimum wage, they make us feel good. They don't actually work. Is there a way, like everybody has a job they do and they know how that job works? They know how to achieve a result for a customer.

Yeah, if they're any good at the job. Right. Somebody comes to me and says, "Hey, I want a website that accepts payments." I'll say, "I know the steps to take and write the code for you and produce that for you." Does anybody know how to achieve economic outcomes? Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, a car mechanic knows how to fix cars, right? A computer scientist knows how to program a computer. An economist knows how to create jobs.

And so someone who's only studied like English or philosophy, and this is their only background, they're not likely to know the effects of policies. I read that about 80% of philosophy majors support socialism. And it's not like socialism was just thought up in the last few years.

And it sounds good. And so we ought to try it. It's been tried in like a million places and in different times and places.

It always makes people poor. Yes, exactly. It makes people equally poor.

So, I was telling a friend of mine in Greece who was experiencing the tragic effects of socialism that he said, "Why on Earth are people in the US excited about socialism? What are you thinking?" Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I said, "Well, they think the most important thing is that everybody be equal and have equal outcomes." And he said, "Oh, well, if that's what they care about, socialism does make sense because it makes everybody equally poor." And I thought that that was right on target.

So yeah, if you don't know basic economics, you don't know the outcomes, the results of socialism, but this is not a matter of feelings or opinions. I think that's why a lot of Christians think that we shouldn't concern ourselves too much or fight too hard for certain policies. I think they think it's just a matter of opinions.

And so nobody really knows, but this is not the case if you have studied public policy, if you have studied economics, if you studied education policy, things like this, you're going to see consistent results. And if you read economists like Thomas Sowell, for example, you're going to learn which policies produce good results and how that has happened in different times and places and why it's predictable even still today. Jared: Yeah, if there's one thing people get out of this podcast, I think on the top of the list would be everybody, every Christian needs to read Thomas Sowell and other Christian people like Jay Richards and just learn some economics because what you're saying is critical.

There are people who know which policies will get you to a certain result. It is not decided on feelings, it's not decided on opinions. And I just want to mention in the podcast, there's a wonderful article by a philosopher called Robert Nozick and he writes about how people, you mentioned that 80% of philosophers support socialism.

He mentions how people who are sometimes disconnected from the real world and they kind of survive in academia by just talking, you know, wordsmiths, he calls them in the article, they tend to be really liberal. And so I'm going to link that article in the show notes, everybody check out the show notes, and you'll kind of see why it is that people who have a background in English or philosophy tend to be more liberal. It has something to do with the fact that they don't really know the steps in the real world that they have to take.

So it turns out that people like plumbers and electricians who haven't even had like formal university educations kind of understand how business and policy works better than people who just talk for a living. So I want to pick up on something you said you talked about, oh, you know, sometimes it's not a good idea for us to hand people welfare because it encourages them to make bad decisions. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of policies that make us feel good, but don't provide any sort of accountability or incentive toward good or noble or biblical behavior.

And these actually cause harm in the long run. And so and there are other ways to achieve the results that we want that are far, far more effective. So I'll give you another example.

Canceling student debt loan debt. Yes, loan debt canceling student loan debt punishes people who took out the loans who are responsible for the loans. Yeah.

And it forces other people to pay their loans, their debt for them. This may be people who didn't go to college so didn't take out these loans. People who aren't even born.

But we have a $30 trillion national debt right now, 1.6 trillion in student loan debt. And this is not going to be paid off by the people who are living today. It's it's it's children and babies of future generations are going to pay for this.

Yeah, I have a story about this. I used to mentor a girl named Mackenzie, and she was having so much fun being mentored by me, finishing her education, getting a job and all that, that she picked up a single mom who was going to her church to mentor her. So she was like, you're mentoring me.

I want to try to mentor someone else. So she was telling this single mom what decisions to make about jobs and money and what books to read. And everything was going great.

And the church was actually helping this single mom that she was mentoring out. Then all of a sudden, the single mom applied for government welfare and she got the welfare and all of and she just disappeared from church and stopped listening to Mackenzie and stop listening to the church people. And she just went back to partying and and chasing.

Hi, bad boys. Christian charity comes with a Christian worldview. It comes with accountability when the government gives you money.

You know, they're not telling you stop what you're doing or make that, you know, straighten up and fly right. There's nothing like that when someone just sends you a check. You keep doing what you're doing to keep the checks coming.

Yeah. And our you know, our theology ought to inform that that, you know, we have inherent bent towards sinfulness and that, you know, and we also, you know, Paul, the Apostle Paul mentioned, you know, said that that he was not willing to work, should not eat. And we need to take these in mind as well as, you know, what we've seen work and not work for a long time.

So what's an example of a policy that you think sounds good, but doesn't work? Yeah. Okay, so I want to talk about something before the 2020 election, we were doing great as a as a country in terms of energy policy. We were energy independent.

We weren't importing energy. Our gas prices were low and inflation was low. Now, right after we elected a new president in 2020, we reentered this Paris Climate Accord, which is like restricting energy production and use in order to stop global warming.

We canceled the permit for this huge pipeline that would have brought good, clean natural gas and down from Canada, helping us to not have to buy from Russia or, you know, other countries that don't like us very much. We halted oil and natural gas leases on public lands. And we even started reviewing the existing permits to see which ones could be canceled.

Now, all of these decisions that were made by the incoming administration hurt energy development. And what happens is people who invest, they can see which sector is not going to produce a return. So they stop investing in it.

And then the people who produce this energy, they see that they're not getting investment. So they stop developing new sites. They stop drilling, they stop exploring.

So what happens is although these decisions were made in order to help people and these people always talk about helping the poor, what happened is when the supply went down, the demand stayed the same. And anybody who knows economics knows that supply and demand decides prices. So if there's less supply and the demand is the same, the prices go up.

And that's exactly what we're seeing. You just have to go to a gas station and you can see that you're paying more for gas. And the problem is that when you pay more for gas, because the economy runs on, you know, things being shipped or keeping the lights on in a building, everybody is paying more.

So you're paying more to deliver things and you're paying more to keep the lights on even in your computer lab. So the price of everything goes up and that's why we're seeing inflation. Well, yeah.

And that along with stimulus spending, you know, just printing a bunch of more money and handing it out like it's, you know, like it's sand. That's a big problem that's contributing to our inflation as well. Yeah.

And you would think that the current administration would see that the stimulus spending and the higher energy costs were causing the inflation, but instead what they do is they actually approved a Russian pipeline so that Russia could sell their natural gas to Europe. So we don't, we're not drilling for our own energy. We're relying on a country like Russia to sell the people energy instead of us.

Right. Yeah. And you know, maybe that's where Russia got the money for their invasion of Ukraine.

You know, I mean, it certainly certainly didn't help. It certainly didn't deter Russian aggression, right? I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that Biden's weakness on foreign policy and Western dependence on Russia, you know, did anything to deter Russian aggression. I agree.

So should Christian voters focus on a candidate's character or their legislative agenda? I mean, in the, in the 2020 election, a lot of Christians rejected a candidate with a pro-life record because, you know, he wasn't the nicest man. He was very narcissistic. He tweeted mean things.

I'm sure you know who I'm talking about. Oh, yes. You know, not really too many people's favorite person in the world, but it seems to me that Biden's legislative agenda was a much bigger threat.

Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. So like Christians should have known about what Biden was going to do before he took office. And the reason for that is because a lot of the legislation that we're being threatened with now, like I'm speaking, we're recording this on the day when the Senate is going to vote on the Women's Health Protection Act.

And this is a bill that has previously passed in the Democrat controlled house before Biden took office. And if it passes the Senate today, he's going to sign it. And what does it do? It rolls back all the state level restrictions on abortion.

So everything that any state like Tennessee or Texas or these good pro-life states have done will be immediately eliminated by this. And Christians should have known that they should have said, nevermind the mean tweets, don't let this bill pass. We don't want the Women's Health Protection Act.

It would it would just be terrible. And another bill was the Equality Act, which basically, you know how you hear about these Christian businesses like photographers and florists and all these businesses getting sued by LGBT activists, LGBT activists at this in states or those states have something called SOGI laws, which is sexual orientation and gender identity laws. And those SOGI laws allow LGBT activists to sue Christian businesses for refusing to participate in same sex weddings.

What the Equality Act is, is it's just a nationwide SOGI law. So in all 50 states, Christians who refuse to participate in same sex ceremonies, they would be prosecutable. You'd be dragged into court.

Do you want that legislation or do you want the mean tweets? Right, exactly. I mean, Christians have to care more about the policies that we're living under than about the personality of a specific candidate. What he's like as a person, you know, we're not being asked if we want to marry this person.

We're, but we are having our, our beliefs, our values, our lives, in many cases put on the line, our businesses put on the line. So we need to think about those things. We have to dig a little bit deeper than just, you know, mean tweets.

Yeah, I agree completely. I agree completely. One last claim.

What do you make of this? I've heard this policies don't change people's hearts. Only the gospel does. Yeah.

I have a couple of thoughts on that. I mean, first of all, laws are not intended to change hearts. They're intended to regulate behavior.

So is it really a big problem if criminals don't do as much criminal activity unless their hearts are changed? And I don't think, I don't think I don't particularly care about that. I want to be able to walk down the street safely. I want to be able to share the gospel without, you know, tremendous threats and, and, you know, raise children.

Getting fired. That's the one I worry about. Yeah, exactly.

So if that was all that laws did was regulate behavior, that's a noble end in and of itself. But actually the reality is that laws do change public opinion. They do kind of in a way persuade hearts because people who are not grounded in the scriptures, who don't have a biblical worldview, usually tend to get their morality from the culture around them.

And we saw this with, with abortion, for example, the overwhelming majority of Americans were opposed to abortion until Roe v. Wade in 1973. And public opinion swayed fairly quickly. And same-sex marriage, we saw that as well.

When the people were becoming more and more liberal in their thinking about same-sex marriage very, very slowly. And then there was a big shift when President Obama declared that he was in favor of it and an even larger shift when the Supreme Court made it the law of the land, that same-sex marriage is to have equal protection under the law. I really feel like, like, you know, Jesus talks about the definition of marriage in the New Testament.

He says a man and a woman will leave their parents and, and cleave into, you know, one flesh. We have a definition of marriage. Even on abortion, you know, you mentioned the argument from Christians goes like this, you know, it's wrong to take an innocent human life.

And then premise two is supplied by science. The unborn from the moment of conception has human DNA and it's a living being and it's distinct DNA from the parents. Therefore, it's wrong to end the life of the unborn.

So, this is not rocket science and Christians should be faithful to what Christianity teaches us to value. It's not wrong for us to push our views in persuasive discussions and in the laws that we, and policies that we vote for. Exactly.

Again, I mean, like we've said, God cares about human beings. And as we've said, these policies are not just a matter of, you know, opinion and feelings and flipping a coin and not really knowing what the outcomes will be. We have evidence and data to go by.

We need to dig a little deeper. Policy matters because they affect humans and humans matter. Well said.

And I think that's a good time for us to end the episode. So if you're listening and you enjoy the show, please like, comment, share, and subscribe. You can find the references for this episode on winterynight.com. That's W-I-N-T-E-R-Y-K-N-I-G-H-T.com. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and we'll see you again in the next one.

Bye. Bye.

[MUSIC]