Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to the Truth Exchange Podcast. This is a weekly program with Dr.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: Jeffrey J. Ventrella, 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 Bag.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: What differentiates legitimate Christian engagement in politics from political idolatry?
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a very important question. I think the answer is embedded in the question. And the real question is, in whom do we trust, worship, serve and obey? And it's really a heart issue, an orientation issue as to where do we look for. For rescue? Where do we look for redemption? Okay, that's point number one. Is the true and living God, or is it simply the strong man or the strong state?
Second of all, we need to understand that we idolize the state. When we ask the state to be, in essence, omnipotent, that is to say, to use means or methods beyond what God has outlined for the state to do, we know the state is legitimate. Jesus says the state is legitimate. Christ calls us to render the Caesar. The things that are Caesar's. Well, then what are those things?
Well, the state. God prefers order as opposed to anarchy.
There's a distinction between a unrighteous act and an unrighteous regime.
And then we have to ask, what's the authority of the magistrate, to put it in Presbyterian terms? And the answer is, it is a servant of God.
For those who do wrongful conduct, they're not to be surveilling our thoughts. They're not to be muting our speech. Rather, it's the conduct that's overt, that's noticeable. And we would argue, according to the Scriptures, that due process convicts. So really, it's a limited idea with respect to the state.
When we expect the state notice any natural disaster, the first question asks is, what's FEMA going to do? What's the state going to do? We don't look toward civil society. We don't look toward the centuries of actual societal solutions that have taken care of these things literally for millennia.
Family, church, civil societies, and those sorts of things. So all of a sudden we're on default mode, saying that the first call, the best option, if to put it in a sports analogy, who do you want at the plate? We say the state. Well, that sort of default mentality is a clue that we may be not simply venerating or honoring the emperor, we may in fact be worshiping the emperor. And that's how I think we can start thinking about it.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: You warn that When Christians place ultimate hope in the state rather than in Christ, the state becomes an idol.
Where should the boundary lie between righteous political action and the crossing into idol worship?
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Well, we've certainly seen that, haven't we? We've seen that with this merger sort of thing. I think that's biblically proscribed. I mean, Moses is not Aaron. And we see over and over again a clear distinction occurring. Look at the Westminster assembly in the 17th century.
The primary issue there was erastinism. Does the state dictate to the Church its doctrine and practice, or is it vice versa? And so this weird melding that has been attempted, it's tempting because it's like, look, the church, we have the answers. We'll just have the state do them. Well, again, I think we ought to, as the church, be in a position to propose rather than impose. The Church doesn't impose anything. The church proclaims. Okay? Now because the state is a minister of God, it's not absolutely authoritative and it is a, how can I put this?
It's not a position.
It's, it's, it's a, it's a, how can I put it?
The state is not established as a position established for a purpose. And when that purpose is not executed, we need to hold it accountable. We need to speak against it. We need to, to use the baseball metaphor, call balls and strikes. When the administration does something, well, President praise it. When it does something unrighteous, call it out. That, I think, is how we best do that. Otherwise we have a collapse of the kingdom with a political agenda. And that's a very dangerous place to be.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: How does the biblical narrative of Israel's demand for a king and for modern Christian political alliances?
For example, in First Samuel, God rebukes Israel for rejecting him and wanting a human king, like all the nations, a move rooted in idolatry. How should that caution or shape today's Christian attitudes towards strongman politics or governmental salvation? Is the state inherently capable of exercising redemptive authority or is that prerogative exclusively Christ?
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great, that's a great question. And I, I, I, I resonate with it because it's like, look, we can do good things.
Couple things, put the lawyer hat on. What do you mean by redemptive?
If you mean, hey, let's create space and allow civil society, that is to say non state entities, to do their work well, that is indirectly or derivatively redemptive in the sense that it allows an even playing field. It protects civil society. But I think what the Question questioner really is intending is, can the state do something in addition to holding law breakers to justice? That is to say, can the state initiate programs that are in some way actually redemptive? Well, you know, the state didn't die for your sins. The state didn't atone for your sins. So it's certainly not redemptive in any sense the way Christ is. But more importantly, the state is not called to do redemptive kinds of thing. It's called to protect and to prosecute. And so, if I understand the question correctly, I would say the answer is no. The state is not a redemptive entity. The church is a redemptive institution.
The state exists to protect the church in doing its redemptive activity and to grant freedom and liberty to Christians to pursue the proclamation and living out, let's put it this way, salt and light to preserve and to illuminate so that people can't be pointed to Christ, who is redemption.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: What theological framework helps Christians resist the temptation to see political victories as signs of spiritual favor?
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, so this, this is a tricky one in the sense that the caricature, of course, is the prosperity gospel. Right. I must be doing God's will because I'm a multi millionaire. Look at the mansions I have. Look at the private planes I have. Can't you help me be successful? So this is the idea of transactionalism. I put a coin, the coin of faith, in the machine of God and he spits out a lottery ticket and we win. Kind of an idea there.
However, I'm going to only slightly push back on myself there and say, look, does covenant faithfulness produce blessing? And is that blessing something more than ethereal or good thoughts? I think the answer is clearly, less clearly, yes. That is to say, when we live faithfully, Paul's promises so will go well with you and your children on the earth.
So there is this idea of covenant faithfulness produces blessings. Now, is that, can we zero in and say, therefore that's geopolitical?
Well, that's a little bit of a stretch to be thinking about. And, and I think we have to also ask, you know, political.
What is the political success? Give you a good example, during the first Trump administration, through a series of, you know, excellent litigation moves and the fact that the personnel in the court changed, we got rid of a foundationally unconstitutional and evil decision, Roe versus Wade.
And yet we have, on the second Trump administration, free reign on in vitro fertilization, free reign on public homosexuality and all these kinds of things. So it's like, so how do you, how would you ascribe success? You can only subscribe success if you have tunnel vision. And so I think the safer way to think about this is is there greater freedom to love God and love neighbor in that order?
And then are we seeing a structure of society that is more in tune with the edicts of the kingdom of God? I think that is a better litmus test to success rather than election victories. I mean, we are recording this on the cusp of a forthright, overt, explicit socialist.
Looks like they're going to be winning the mayoral election of New York City. Now think about how odd that is.
You have a. The financial capital of the world based upon equity market, equity, venture capital, and you're going to have a socialist come in and start tinkering with all that. The people are schizophrenic. It makes no sense. Well, the answer there is. Well, I think the, the answer is that right wing populist agitation always leads to left wing populist agitation.
So what we're seeing here is a, I think pretty easily forecasted rebound from populism and it's detrimental. Another. Why is that related to the question? Because populism rejoices in these little political. We won, we're in power. Guess what? That's not necessarily success. That's a setup for a loss down the rule. And again, we don't keep, keep a score of the kingdom of God through the polling booth. It's just not biblical calculus.
Sure. Populism is a political movement that's based upon kind of a grassroots what do the people want? And so it's kind of, it's a sort of leading toward.
This is a prejudicial term, but I think people understand it. Mob rule, it's, it's the idea of mob rule. And so what we have is leaders, instead of leading, they take, put their finger in the wind, take a poll to go, oh, the people want this, I'm going to do this.
And Andrew Jackson, a classic example of populism.
And it's, it's really detrimental because it leads to kind of a pure democracy.
And of course our founders rejected democracy, thought, thought it was perhaps one of the worst systems ever because it produces the tyranny of the majority. And it's deadly. That's deadly. To protecting pre political rights.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Dr. Ventrell critiques the new rights ethic of reward friends, punish enemies politicized as spiritual mandate. How can believers integrate biblical warnings about the fallibility of power with the pursuit of righteousness?
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah, so there's authority. And then there's this lust for being able to essentially shut down dialogue and cabin in any opposition. And that usually leads to censoring dissent and that sort of thing. I think that on a grassroots or retail level, we Christians need to vigorously maintain the idea of structural pluralism, that the rule of law applies to everyone equally and fairly, and that the means matter. How we go about what we do matters just as morally as what we do.
And so we want to end abortion through legislation and change of the culture, not dynamiting abortion centers.
Both of them would end abortion, but the means matter. And so we cannot condone this idea of vanquishing enemies, because the reality is we would need to vanquish ourselves first.
We are more like our political opponents than we are like Jesus. And until we get that in our bones and understand that we are not going to have the fruit of the Spirit.
And so one thing I would encourage people to think about and then to do is to ask the question, does what I'm observing, even though it has political traction, manifest the fruit of the spirit?
Because if it does not, kindness, gentleness, all those kinds of things, it's not of God, probably. And I think that, you know, it may be a shortcut.
We may be able to, aha, I have power and gloat for 10 minutes. But that doesn't produce this kind of society that the kingdom of God has ushered in.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Scripture warns against idolatry and truth. Exchange has noted cultural icons and ideas often act as conveyor belt of idolatrous thought, creating one systems. What practical and theological methods can the church employ to recognize and resist these oneness currents?
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so, and the question, I believe they're talking about the institutional church. I'll take the question in that way. The institutional church needs to be the institutional church.
It needs to equip the believers for the work of ministry. So my, my metaphor would be the church. The institutional church should not be a bomb shelter.
Rather, it should be an ammo depot that equips individual believers to go out and use their callings and giftings to do these sorts of things.
The lure of C.S. lewis, and I think I footnoted this, wrote this essay called the Inner Ring. This idea of gravitating and making choices so that you're on the inside, beyond the inside, be close to the levers of power, able to whisper into those decision makers. That is a temptation and it's very dangerous. It rots from the inside. And so we shouldn't avoid assuming responsibility. We're called to maturity we're called to assume responsibility, and yet we need to do it in a godly way. And so what the church needs to do is to preach the whole counsel of God, to equip people, to inform them, and frankly, to be able to use cultural apologetics both as illustrations and as teaching opportunities, whether seminars, Sunday schools, or even from the pulpit, to illustrate these kinds of things and show, starting with Romans 1, that what we're dealing with here is a system that denies the creature creator distinction. It's placing ultimate trust in, in some form of creation, whether that's an idea, a person or institution. And we need to say that is idolatrous. And when that idolatry occurs, it leads to evil practices. And we're seeing, you know, people say, you know, God's judgment's coming now. It's here, folks. We are living in a situation where vast swaths of society have been given over, and we need to speak in those categories. I think Dr. Jones did that a lot.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: What ways can Christians faithfully render to Caesar what is Caesar's, without compromising the worship owed to God alone?
[00:16:24] Speaker A: So I think we need moral clarity, which leads to moral conviction, which then leads to moral courage to do the right thing or do the next right thing. And so one idea here is to be clear on the theology of the state.
Far too often we become phobic or reluctant to talk about the state thinking that, oh, I don't want the church to be political. Well, this is precisely what's caused a lot of our confusion, is that we have not hit this head on and we have not articulated what the scriptures tell us and warn us about the state. The state is a servant of God. It's a legitimate institution.
Its means of, of discharging that responsibility is coercive. It bears the sword. The nature of the state is to coerce. Well, that should tell us something with respect to public policy.
Anything that I assign to the state will be coerced, like health care.
Guess what? You put health care under the auspices of the state, you're going to have rationing and you're going to have shortages, and you're going to have a lessening of research and liberty because it's coercive. These dots are pretty easy to connect if we have moral clarity about the purpose of the state. And so I think we need to be able to say, whoa, that's not your job.
Whoa, that's not your job. We had a senator recently, friend of mine I've known for a long time was calling out for a federal minimum wage.
It's like, you know, that's not a political issue. That's a moral issue because it's theft. It is theft against employers and. And it's theft against the labor force because it excludes people from labor. That is a wrong thing for the state to do. And I'm getting, you know, ramped up here. But, I mean, this is. This is not hard. This is. Economics has empirically shown this over and over and over and over again. It is an immoral thing to do. We need to stop it and we need to call it out now. We need to do so. I'm not being very gracious here and calm, but I wouldn't talk like this. I were talking to my senator friend, but I would point out because he's a smart guy, he knows better.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: 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.
