Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign welcome to the Truth Exchange Podcast. This is a weekly program with Dr. Jeffrey J. Ventrell, where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo, and this is another edition of the Director's Best Bag. In this episode, we are going to push pause on letters from our subscribers and we're going to deal with some of the more miscellaneous items, specifically cultural events. And there's just a couple that I've laid out here for our discussion on place in Iran, ICE and immigration and other issues like that.
On Friday morning, June 13, Iran's forces, or Israel attacked Iran, at least in five different cities.
A bit of discussion online on the relationship of the church in Israel, the US And Israel. Is there still a relationship that, that the church should be involved with Israel? Should we care? I know if you're a dispensationalist, you kind of are looking to the east for certain things to take place for the coming of Christ, whereas if you're in other camps, you may be almost to the side of saying, let Israel deal and fend for itself. Itself.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Thank you, Joshua. I think you phrased the question quite well.
So one of the questions, one thing implicit in your question is how our theology should influence how we view these kinds of things. And I think that's right.
I think we should, first of all look at the fact that as a Christian, worldviews matter. And so you have Persia, which is essentially what Iran is, which had a very pagan history of Zoroastrianism and all that sort of stuff. Now they are, I believe, Shiite Islam, and they're ruled by a totalitarian bunch of moolahs and a supreme leader, so on, so forth. And then you have Israel. Israel is a very liberal democracy.
It doesn't really follow the Talmud and those sorts of things.
But on both cases, you have people who need the blessing of a saving relationship with Christ, who is Israel's Messiah. So I think we start there and we have some intellectual modesty as all. But I guess the first point again is that worldviews matter. What do I mean by that? Well, in an existential crisis, the idea here is that Iran is about to execute nuclear weapons and they've avowed their official policy to is to wipe the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, killing all the Jews and everything about the Jewish state.
So they made a political decision, that is to say Israel did, to preemptively prevent this acquisition of nuclear arms. And what did they do they targeted military targets, they took out military leaders and they tried to neutralize the uranium enriching and weapon making places. Contrast that with what Iran did in response. What did Iran do? It targeted civilian populations, hospitals, civic buildings, and all the rest.
Worldviews do matter. So that's point number one.
Point number two is implicit in your question too, is that we don't support Israel for any eschatological purposes or because we think that there's something particularized about what happened in 1948 with the establishment of the state.
This is purely a international calculus, foreign political analysis the United States has to make. We're looking at the Middle East. Middle east is bellicose. Israel is the one stable democracy there, and it's a long a longtime ally and partner. And so the US Is deciding, okay, we know what Iran did to hostages to the United States. We know that they are funding terrorism and calling for the death of both Israel and the United States. We know that they funneled money to Hamas and Hezbollah that have just been atrocious. If anyone wants to understand the death cult which is known as Hamas, they ought to read Douglas Murray's most recent book where he gives anecdote after anecdote after anecdote of what happened in Gaza on October 7.
The people inhabiting Israel at that time were the peaceniks. They were the left of center people. They were the people that said we could have toleration and coexistence and the Hamas people would have none of it. And they were killing grandmothers and infants.
So we're dealing here with really barbaric, focused, unequivocal attacks on Israel. So the question from the United States perspective is, do we intervene? Do we provide assistance with respect to that for purposes of stabilizing and preventing a sworn enemy from becoming more powerful?
On the one hand, of course, you have, you know, populists who say we should not be involved in anything internationally.
I think that's utterly foolish. We're based upon trade. If someone stops the trade, like the Somalia pirates, we have to be involved to allow the trade to do it. The Houthis would be the same thing. So on the other hand, we have people that say, well, we're just utter, you know, Zionists and we've got to protect Israel at all costs. And again, why would you want to do that? Israel's pro abortion. Israel is probably lgbtq. And so we're not doing it because of their policies. We're doing it because of stability in our own international interests. How should a Christian do that the Christians should thirdly be praying, praying for peace, praying for reconciliation, restoration, and for justice.
It is never wrong to do a righteous thing, and a righteous thing includes stopping bullies, whether that's on the playground or. Or whether that's on the international sphere. And so we should never apologize for prepending a bully to do something. We don't have to let the bully bloody our own noses before we stop them. And we certainly don't have to allow a bully to bloody someone who's helpless and innocent. That's kind of off the top of my head, but I think that we need to be modest, but we also need to understand the principles of good governance.
And our government would not be a faithful savior if it allowed evil to proliferate.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Regarding the modesty aspect, Dr. Montrella, how far does the U.S.
is there an obligation to be the international police of bullies?
Are we. Yeah. Do we have that obligation to police every nation? The tension is, well, there's the government's job, and then there's like, what should the church be involved with? And how much should Christians feel obligated to support a nation or their government to be the international police?
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So a couple things.
Let's start on the micro level. Constitutionally, the United States, excuse me, does not have a duty to be the international policeman. Rather, the federal government is designed to protect the safety and security of the United States. So that means preventing invasions.
That means quelling domestic insurrections and chaos. It also means having both, not only military but diplomatic pressure to make sure that the interests of the United States are not infiltrated, subordinated, or otherwise ruined in a way that deals incorrectly with our safety and security.
So the limits are they must be tied to national security, not just, hey, something bad happened in Botswana, let's go take out the leader. That's not the United States job.
Your second question on the macro level is, what is the ideal focus of a government versus another government?
And ultimately, both are established by God, both are legitimate, but they have limited power. And that limited power is they must discharge and be a minister of God himself. And so then we have to look to essentially biblical law to understand what are the limits and what are the duties of various states. And so anytime there's, you know, upheaval, it's not our job to police. The federal government is not a policing agent. Rather, he is a minister of justice. And that. And very interesting. Romans 13 says he punishes conduct, not bad policy, not erroneous thoughts, but conduct, actual conducts. That's injurious. To the common good. So that limits, I think, the federal government from being any sort of policing agent.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: There's been a number of articles that have come up in my inbox regarding ice, but I wanted to broaden this for, because we have listeners from over 118 countries and nations that listen in. So I wanted to make this a bit more broader. But in the United States, the Trump administration has had ice, which is an immigration custom enforcing agency to detain illegal immigrants and to send them back.
So, but rather than just focusing on ICE and what's the Christian worldview on that? What is a Christian worldview on immigration? I know we've kind of touched on it in the past a little bit, but more so specifically on illegal immigrants. And what should the Christian process or how should we think about the process of dealing with illegal immigrants? Should it be intense and to drive them out, or should there be a bit of more grace and, and, and nurture that goes coupled with that?
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question.
So again, the question is, what's the state's obligation?
What's the individual Christian's obligation? And where do those intersect? What's the Christian's obligation to the state?
So let's start there. A Christian's obligation is to honor the emperor and to obey the emperor, unless the emperor calls the individual Christian to disobey a direct command of God or to do something that contradicts a direct command of God. And so the state's enforcement of its immigration policy is not something that Christians should be civilly disobedient about.
The state is simply enforcing the law.
If we have a problem with that, then we need to change the law through the appointed mechanisms legitimately and that sort of thing. So what does that mean?
Sanctuary churches, sanctuary cities are essentially violating and disobeying Caesar, in this particular case, disobeying the state. So I think those things are out of bounds.
On the other hand, as Christians, we ought to be welcoming of the stranger. We do understand that, that there'll be a multitude of ethnicities and peoples and nations ultimately worshiping Christ.
When it comes to that, I favor a robust but measured legal immigration policy through various steps. That would include things like, hey, let's make sure we're not bringing in people to subvert the United States. Let's make sure there's true integration and assimilation into the culture of this particular nation.
Because I think that I, I It's interesting, Sophie Scholl and her brother who led the resistance to the Nazis, her brother said something very interesting this Is, of course, before he was executed by the Nazis, he said, God made me Christian and German, and so I must be faithful to both.
And so his point in opposing the freer.
Because there's a distinction, Joshua, between an evil policy and an evil regime.
And so we ought to oppose an evil regime. And that's what Sophie Schol's brother did. He says, he made me a Christian, so I have a higher law I've got to obey, but he also made me German, and so I must act in that. That particular way. And so to protect Germany as a nation, he had to oppose an evil regime.
That's not the United States at this point. I mean, the United States makes many political mistakes. The beauty is we have a constitution that's able to flex and to adapt and has intentional gridlock to prevent the consolidation of power and all those sorts of things. So I think as Christians, and I've kind of touched on most of the aspects of your question there, but I think we should welcome people to be part of what we're doing, but we should do that in a way that comports with the laws of the land. And so this idea of hiding or facilitating illegal immigration or hiding people who are not here legitimately, I mean, one of the things I hear often, I live in a border state is, oh, you know, we're deporting these people. We're, quote, separating families, as if that's a justification for not enforcing the law. If you just go down to the courthouse and look at any criminal sentencing, if someone's been convicted and they're sentenced to incarceration, guess what? They're being separated from their families. That's the nature of what justice Abs has. And the reality is, for fidelity to Christ sometimes calls us to be, you know, mother against father and son against, you know, all that sort of stuff. Jesus brings a sword in that sense. So ultimate fidelity is not to the family unit. It's to Christ. It's to Jesus.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Okay, well, that.
That sets us up for the next question regarding yet or Last week we had the episode on All Cretans are Liars, and some of there was a bit of commotion about on the sin of partiality.
And what is to what extent do we have love of neighbor versus the love of our own kin?
And at what point do we. Do we actually follow, fall into a sin of partiality? Are we not to love our wives and our children differently than we love our neighbors? And do we not have an obligation to them versus that love of neighbor?
And so what is that divide between that spirituality and then versus the. The blood in the soil.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So what's happening is a lot of the kinists and the neo racialists are making the argument. It goes, well, wait a minute. There are indications that, you know, if the choice between Fred's son, who lives 10 miles from where I am, and my son, I'm going to rescue my son.
Right. And so there. The thing there, though, of course, is it's not the kinship that does it. It's the parental relationship that triggers it. There's a duty because someone is a father and a mother. There's a duty when someone is a son or a daughter, there's a duty between those. And so those duties are more expansive than they are to the neighborhood. But it's not one or the other. It's a question of priority. What we're seeing, however, is a differentiation that's based upon arbitrary criteria. It's not based upon criteria that's defined by a biblical duty. Rather, it's criteria that says, I just prefer this. It's just subjective. And so what they're doing is, I think, mixing modalities. They're taking a legitimate duty that's imposed by the law of God on a parent and saying, see, that's. That's just saying we're supposed to be partial.
No, it's a particularized duty. Partiality is arbitrariness.
For example, we are not to favor the rich or the poor when it comes to justice. And yet when someone's convicted, guess what? That we're being partial by preferring the victim to the offender. But that's not partiality that the Bible condemned.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: This concludes a recording of the Director's Bag. For more resources from Truth Exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth Exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the Director's Bag. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
Sam.
