Historic Quote: 0:12
President, Thomas Jefferson said I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Rick Green: 0:34
You found your way to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's the WallBuilders Show, where we take on the hot topics of the day, but from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And if you're a longtime listener, you know exactly what I'm saying when I say biblical, historical and constitutional. But if you're a first-time listener, let me just tell you biblical means looking to the answer book, looking to the instruction manual that God gave us for life, and it speaks to everything in life, including how we treat our neighbors, and how we treat our neighbors is essentially every political issue. So, whatever a legislature is voting on, or your school board or city council or whatever it's all about, how are we going to treat our neighbors? What's going to happen in our community, what's going to be okay and not okay, what's the punishment going to be when you do something that's not okay? All of those issues are all about how we're treating our neighbors. And so here at WallBuilders we look at a biblical perspective on that. What's the instruction manual from God, say, about how to treat our neighbors? And then we try to learn as much as we can from history. You know, everybody knows the expression if you ignore history, you're doomed to repeat it. I mean, it's worse than that. There's good answers in history. So not only can you prevent repeating bad things, you can actually find what will produce the good stuff, you can find the formulas, the secret sauce for producing a good neighborhood and a good community. And so we want to learn from history. That's why we always get that historical perspective as well and, of course, as Americans, the constitutional perspective. We want to know how to do this properly in our system of government in this land where we have been blessed to be able to live. We live in the greatest nation in the history of the world and we have an opportunity to revive that and restore our constitutional republic. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take effort on your part and my part. We're going to have to do our part as biblical citizens to restore this, but we're going to do it together. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David Barton he's America's premier historian and Tim Barton, a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and all three of us. Thank you for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show. Alright guys jumping into our questions for this Foundation's Freedom. Thursday, John gets the first one. He's coming from California, sunnybrook, california. I don't know where Sunnybrook is. You guys know where Sunnybrook is.

David Barton: 2:35
I have to look at it for you.

Rick Green: 2:36
so it's at a really nice place, I mean, that's the Sunnybrook, sunny California.

David Barton: 2:41
Well, I guess if you're from Arizona or Texas, maybe Sunnybrook is not attractive, but if you're from Vermont or Maine, or something I think Sunnybrook would be pretty attractive.

Rick Green: 2:49
Yeah, yeah, all right. Well, he said hey, thanks for everything you do. I listen to the podcast every day and try to retain what I've learned every day so I can tell others about the truth that I've learned on the podcast. I have an issue it's a very deep concern to me relating to Christian pastors in our country. The January 6th event polarized my family so that now my wife and my three homeschooled children two are graduates and one is still attending William Jessup University they're absolutely against Donald Trump. And also, since then, part of my family has started listening to Timothy Leary Keller. So that's not Timothy Leary. I'm assuming he's actually meeting Timothy Keller, with a little bit of Leary philosophy thrown in there. Anyway, he said, based on what I've read about Keller, there seems to be a connection with he and Marxist ideology. Recently, my daughter spent her second summer working for Mount Herman Retreat Center near Santa Cruz, california, and we go there every year for a week as a family. This year when I went there, I noticed in the bookstore a preeminent display of books where all Tim Keller. I understand that Tim Keller is no longer alive in this world because of pancreatic cancer, but I am wondering if I'm the only one that feels like an alarm should be sounded regarding supposed Christian pastors preaching and teaching Marxism. I feel like the Christian church in America, because of the pastors, are being slow-boiled into Marxism like a frog in a pot. When I brought up the issue of Christian pastors and Christians starting to stand up for the truth regarding our nation, my pastors just said we should fall back on Romans 13, which absolutely repulsed me. I tried to explain to him that we are the authority, we are the government, but I feel like he, like so many other pastors, simply does not get it. Please help. Oh, John, brother, we feel you, we feel your pain, man, and, believe me, you're not the only one that says exactly this sort of thing to us and asks these questions, David Tim. Pastors that just rely on Romans 13 and say, you know, just leave it up to the government, we're just supposed to obey everything that they have to say. And I honestly, you know I can remember a little bit of Tim Keller stuff, but I did not follow him closely so I don't know how close he got to that, but I heard others that are friends of ours, that are definitely on the same page we are, say that, you know, later in life he did seem to get more into that kind of soft approach and not so much salt and light into the culture.

David Barton: 5:06
Yeah, there's really several things in here that are really kind of key and just listening to the question and listening to the kind of things that are being talked about, this to me goes back to the stuff that we talked about with George Barna and World View and we've talked in previous programs. Let me kind of review it again now. But there's 384,000 senior pastors and churches in America. George was calling 500 of these pastors a day, asking them six basic questions about what would be considered the absolutely baseline, fundamental Christian orthodoxy kind of questions. Do you actually need a savior to get to heaven? Is there actually writing rock? And just basic stuff. And he found that overwhelmingly 72% of pastors did not agree with the most basic Christian teachings. So all ready for the pulpit you're looking at. Three out of four that's not there. And just one of the things I've learned from George is one of the easiest ways to tell if someone has a biblical worldview or not is to ask do you think man is basically good? Is man generally good? Sometimes gets off track and anyone who answers that man is basically good does not have a biblical worldview, because the Bible is really clear that all have sinned that the heart of man is desperately wicked. I mean, everything about it is. Man is not good inherently. He can be made good through a savior. He can become good and do better things, and some people can try to do better things, but they're not inherently good. They're not born. They're born with a sin nature. And so what we're seeing is a lot of pastors drifting into that basic thing of people are generally good and you just got to expect the best out of people and none of that's biblical. And I'm going to also step out of a limb and say that, just given the pastors that I've been around and generally it's going to be mostly conservative pastors that I've been around they don't want to speak somewhere. They don't ask me to speak because they're liberal on the other side and want to hear what I've got to say. They generally kind of agree. But I'm going to say that probably three out of four of those pastors would not be able to give an adequate description of what Marxism actually is, and they wouldn't even know if they were really teaching something that was Marxist, because they can't define it. They really don't know what it is, and so you know, one of the easiest ways to look at Marxism is do you talk about groups rather than individuals? Because when you start putting people into groups now, you're moving to that Marxist philosophy. The biblical philosophy is every single soul, every individual, and so I'm going to say that most pastors don't have a biblical worldview, and most don't even know what Marxism really is, and so I think that's one of the first things to address.

Tim Barton: 7:46
Well and Dad, I would point out too that you know, with the idea of groups in Marxist, it's also more than just having groups, because even as Christians, right, we would say, there's the saved and the unsaved right, there's the sheep and the goats, and so it's not just the idea of groups, but when you identify someone by a gender, race, ethnicity, culture, when it's something a little more abstract than what the Bible would identify right, where the Bible does not segregate people based on race, gender, ethnicity. In fact, the Bible tells us that in Christ there is no male and female, that there is no Jew or Greek, there's no city and slave or free. We are all one in Christ and right. Even when Jesus gave the parables, it was a sheep and the goats, it was the wise and the foolish. There were categories, but it wasn't the way that Marxists are doing it. Where Marxists are saying, if you're part of the LGBTQIA+ right or if you're part of the whatever it might be Black Lives Matter, they have a very different categorization than a biblical standard would, and so this isn't saying that there can't be biblical standards that might have groups of the saved and the unsaved, the sheep and the goats, the wise and the foolish, but much more so in the Marxist idea. There are oppressed and oppressors. And when you start categorizing people and saying this group is oppressed and this group over here are the oppressors, that is a very evil Marxist ideology. And so, to add to your point, this is something that we're seeing a lot of pastors not maintaining that biblical perspective on it. And also just to give you some context to this question, because I really do want to spend a little time and maybe offering some thoughts and suggestions of how can we find maybe some restoration and this is interesting as we talk about even Timothy Keller in this question. One of the things that Timothy Keller got in trouble for. Controversial trouble is relative. One of the controversies later in his life was he said that unity was the most important thing and it's not worth arguing over political differences, risking unity, as Christian unity is the most important. Now that sounds good. The problem was he started saying things like we shouldn't debate about abortion because the Bible doesn't tell us the best policies to have in place over abortion and so if one side says their policies are best, the other side that says their policies are best. Those are debatable issues and therefore we should not ruin unity over political issues, and he was saying that abortion is a political issue. Now we would fundamentally disagree because it's not a political issue, right, but this is where again back to the initial thought of the question if you have family members that are saying, hey, we think that unity is far more important than upholding a moral standard and that upholding a moral standard that might bring division, that's not biblical. That also contradicts the very notion and nature of what Jesus said, where he said he did not come to bring peace, he came to bring a sword and through the gospel it would turn father against son, it would turn daughter against mother, because the gospel, it is offensive. The Bible says that the gospel is offensive to those who are perishing, but to us, who are being saved, it's the power of God and the salvation. Jesus said a lot of things.

Rick Green: 11:11
But Tim, Tim, Tim, you make it sound like I mean, Jesus would have never said anything or taken a position that would cause disunity like a riot or you know, people chasing him down with rocks, wanting to no, he would never. Oh wait, the third.

Tim Barton: 11:26
He would never show up at a religious gathering and overturn the tables.

Rick Green: 11:30
No, never.

Tim Barton: 11:31
And say my father's house will be a house of prayer and you've been at a dinner feast. He would never take the time to braid a whip, as the Gospel of John explained, Preparing for the moment he's going to clean out the dimple, but this is a I realize now that a whip helps bring unity.

Rick Green: 11:48
I see how it is.

Tim Barton: 11:49
Yeah, that's the.

Rick Green: 11:50
That's right, Go ahead man.

Tim Barton: 11:52
But this is where there's. There is such a disconnect at times when people read part of the Gospel or part of the Bible and not the whole essence, because certainly God is a God of love and Jesus came to reveal the love and the heart of God. But if you read the whole Bible, Jesus left and when he returns he's returning on a horse and he's coming to to judge and to make war. He's coming to kill all the enemies. That's the God of love. And I'm not saying that we should do that right now, but I'm pointing out that there's more. There's more to who God is than just one of the character traits. God is a God of love, and we're so grateful he is. God is a God of grace and mercy we're so grateful he is. But God's also a warrior. God is also just, god is also holy that there's a lot more to the character and nature of God than just one attribute. And if what we do is focus on one attribute to the compromise or sacrifice of the others, then we don't have a complete picture. Now, that's just. That's part of a general understanding and, Dad, I know you have some you want to add to this.

David Barton: 12:58
Well, Tim, before you go into some of the solution things that you wanted to share, the other thing I want to jump on something you were even talking about there, because again, we're pointing out where there are deficiencies in the thinking of so many Christians, including Christian leaders, and so not only do they have a tendency for presumedism and thinking, people are basically good in tendency for Marxism. And, Tim, even as you're going through all that, all these bad tendencies that are out there, they're really common, and, again, this is what George Barnett calls syncretism. We pick and choose some of all these different things we have and we make our own theology based on how we feel about things. And the other one that really stands out to me in this question, Rick, that you read, is one that I'm hearing more and more of now, and it may be one of the best indicators of absolute biblical ignorance on the part of pastors or anyone else, but it's this thing about Romans 13. Man, listen, you just need to do it. Romans 13 says you don't need to stand up for this kind of stuff. Alright, that's good that you know Rome is 13. And if that were the only verse in the Bible about government, you would have a point, but I'm going to go back to something we talked about before. John Locke in that book he did the Two Treatises of Government that most of the founding fathers read is certainly was one of their three most cited sources in the founding era. Actually, one of the three most cited individuals in the founding era. I mean that little 400 page book. He references the Bible over 1500 times on the proper operation of civil government. And you're going to give me one verse out of Romans 13 and tell me that that's what the Bible says about civil government. You are biblically illiterate. But that's the problem we have with Christians and with pastors, and that's why you only have 4% of Christians today that have a biblical worldview. We don't know what the Bible says.

Tim Barton: 14:46
Well, and you know, Dad, one of the things that most people know from Romans 13 is we're supposed to submit to governing authorities because they represent God, and yet most people I would think at least many people would know about Hebrews 11, which is known as the Faith Hall of Fame. We're told that without faith it's impossible to please God, and we're supposed to look to the heroes of the faith who have gone before us as examples. If you actually take time and study Hebrews 11, nearly every single name mentioned in Hebrews 11, committed acts of civil disobedience and for most of them, their act of great faith was committing civil disobedience. When Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt, he's committing civil disobedience against Pharaoh, who did not want them to go. Joshua he fought the battle of Jericho. He's literally opposing political and government leaders as he is doing what God is calling him to do. And there's even incredible heroes we know from the Bible that are not included in Hebrews 11, because it did not include people like Daniel or Shadrach, meshach and Abednego really noted names from the Bible. The only reason we know their names are because they committed an act of civil disobedience. So, Dad, to your point, if the only thing we know about Romans 13 is even that very narrow thought of you're supposed to submit to governing authority because it represents God, which is not the entirety of Romans 13 says. It says that government is there for your good and they are there as God's representatives. The founding fathers argued and what they had learned from their pastors was that when government ceases to be godly, they cease to represent God and it doesn't mean the institution is not still established by God but that leader. Sometimes it's more godly to oppose an ungodly leader than it is to submit to what the godly leader or the ungodly leader would tell you to do. For example, in Exodus, chapter one, when the Pharaoh saw the Israelites became a two numerous and said hey, you midwives. Whenever one of these Hebrew women has a child and it's a son, we want you to drown that child, we want you to murder that child. And the midwives right began to lie and they said well, these Hebrew women are so strong they keep having babies before we get there. And we just we, we want to do what you say, pharaoh, we just can't get there in time. Their, their act of faith was civil disobedience, because at times it is more godly to disobey an ungodly leader who's giving ungodly orders, than it is to submit to them. Now again, all that I'm trying to do is explain that the very, the very narrow focus some people have of the vermin 13 is not the entirety of Romans 13 and certainly not the entirety of scripture.

David Barton: 17:18
You know, and with that because, Tim, you just gave examples right out of the Bible that probably most pastors have not given or used. But I would encourage people, everybody, not just pastors. I'd encourage every citizen to go online and look up the famous sermon by Dr Jonathan Mayhew in 1755, which laid the foundation on how the founding fathers saw civil government. Now this is a pastor. He's a biblical pastor. His list is one of the most influential pastors of that period. You got to put him up there with Woodfield and Wesley and all the other guys. And that sermon it's all about Romans 13. But he says all right, government's ordained by God. What did God ordain government to do? God ordained government to reward the righteous, punish the wicked. What happens if government's not doing that? What happens if government is rewarding the wicked and punishing the righteous? And that's where we got the motto of the revolution rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. That came from a Romans 13 sermon. Now that's right out of the Bible, and I don't think I've ever heard a Romans 13 sermon today that has called for disobedience if civil government gets out of its box. That God put it in. I mean, we just haven't heard that. That's a great sermon to read from 1755.

Tim Barton: 18:32
Well, Dad, I'll point out that we, at this point we could probably say that we do know some pastors preaching those sermons, because when COVID happened and they were governor, saying that you cannot meet in churches, there were some pastors saying, yeah, we're going to practice civil disobedience right now. So on some level, we've seen some restoration of that.

Rick Green: 18:49
That's right.

Tim Barton: 18:49
Well with some pastors, but it's certainly not the generally understood perspective that most pastors and most Christians have. And right now, all we've done is kind of take a little bit of a theological journey through what some pastors have said or not said and what the Bible says. I really want to get into what are some suggestion solutions? How do you navigate? Because, honestly, we know that there's a lot of people in this scenario. Their family right now is very divided over what happened from January 6th over President Trump, that there's a lot of broken relationships and there's people going man, how do we navigate this? In fact, I was just recently talking to someone as a judge and he is a county judge and he was telling me about his kids and one of his kids going off to college and his kid growing up, started the Republican club in the high school, went to a four year state university, came back and voted for Biden and is now just totally convinced that there's a lot of things that are happening in dynamics of families where parents are going. I mean, how can we navigate the confusion, the hurt, the brokenness, the disconnect with kids? And so I know we need to take a break, but we can make a break.

Rick Green: 20:01
I want to spend some time I was going to say, I think, rather than taking on another question, Tim, I think you're spot on, because there's a lot of our listeners, a lot of families going through this and let's hit this when we come back from the break. Stay with us, folks. It's WallBuilders. We're taking your questions. You can send those in. You got to email them. You email them to radio@WallBuilders.com. radio@WallBuilders.com. Stay with us, we'll be right back on the WallBuilders Show.

Tim Barton: 20:28
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today. And, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out. WallBuilderscom the American Story.

Rick Green: 21:31
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. We're Foundations of Freedom Thursday, where we take your questions and we're going to stick with this question. That really is I mean, you guys. By the way, Tim David, everything you said in the first part of the program answering John's question, the way it sounded to me, is that you know, like discipleship, like that, maybe being a Christian is harder than just walking the aisle. You have to actually study these things, learn these things and apply the Bible and, for pastors especially, actually dive into these issues and actually be willing to take them on from a biblical perspective. So it's hard. And then living it out at home in your family and, Tim, what you were saying before the break man, 100% hear it all the time. These kids that are raised in families that teach biblical values, they go off to some college, they come back and now their own family is the enemy and there's just turmoil between members of the family.

Tim Barton: 22:23
Well, and one of the things that we know to be true as well is that you George Barnes talked about this but you form your worldview based on the information you have, and this is true with so many things, right, when people get upset, they get offended. Whatever perspectives and opinions you have, you have formed those perspectives and opinions, you've formed the offenses, the burdens, whatever it is, based on the information you have. And if you have bad information, you draw wrong or bad conclusions and therefore you have a bad direction that you're going to go with this or wrong direction right, based on wrong information that led you to draw wrong conclusions. And I think what's happened, especially with things like January 6th, is so many people have become so set of what January 6th was, or what it wasn't, based on the information they got. And there were some people that listed a CNN, there were some people that listened to Fox or listened to Glenn Beck or whoever it was, and so they have a very fixed perspective of what January 6th was. We actually all of us we had a pretty strong perspective as well, because we all remembered that when it was happening, we were on our social medias, we were watching people with their phones, going live streaming walking through the Capitol high-fiving police officers. And so we had this one perspective well then, cnn showing that man, no, there was actual fights and it looked like a riot. And so people are going well, what was actually true? What happened? And then, of course, with the FBI silencing stuff and nobody knows. Well, now that that video evidence is being released more and more and more, we're realizing that a lot of the conclusions people drew they didn't have the whole story and actually we've learned more that there was one entrance where there were some Antifa members and there was great violence. That did happen at that one entrance from these Antifa members, but that wasn't the majority of the people who were there and it wasn't the majority of what happened. But some of both was true. But if you have bad information you draw wrong conclusions. And I think what we have to navigate is we don't want to sacrifice if we can help it. We don't want to sacrifice family relationships over the debate over the correct information, in the sense of, like we're CNN or Fox News correct. But that's the wrong debate and discussion to have, because most people will come in from a defensive perspective and if you are defensive then you care more about defending your side and winning the argument than you do about what's true. And I think one of the things that we have to focus on is we have to play the long game, and what that means is we want to win the person, not just the argument, because once we win the person, it's easier for us to guide them in truth in the conversation and we can have honest conversations. Look at both sides. But we have to stop thinking about how do we win the argument and start recalibrating to how do I win the person. For families, this is so important For parents, how can I win my kids? And so often we want to just throw truth at them and say that's wrong and it's done what you believe and that perspective is dumb. Your professor was wrong, because that's true. But truth without love or without relationship will not accomplish what we want, and I think for so many people the relationship has been compromised. So we have to restore the relationship before we focus on that truth.

Rick Green: 25:42
Yeah, man, sounds like civil discourse. You know, we're not barbarians, so we're not just going to beat them over the head with a stick, we're going to ask questions. We're going to have that civil discourse. So good man, so good. We really appreciate the question. My heart goes out to you, John. You're not alone, man. You're not alone. We hear from a lot of folks just in exactly the same position and we want to equip you and we want to give you the tools that you need to be able to ask good questions, and so I appreciate you listening every day. We'll continue to bring truth as best we can and encourage you to continue to share and pray for those kiddos and pray for reconciliation and just the opportunity, as Tim's saying, to have the conversations and to build the relationship back and win them over. Thanks so much for listening folks. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.