Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with Doctor 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 Guillotine, and this is another edition of the director's Bag.
This is the Truth Exchange podcast, a preliminary symposium edition where we discuss the upcoming event with our speakers giving a glimpse into the theme of the symposium as well as the subject of their talk. I'm your host, Joshua Gulo, along with Doctor Jeffrey J. Ventrella. Today's guest is Doctor P. Andrew Sandlin. Welcome back to the program. By the way, it's been a number of years since we've had you.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: We invite you all our listeners to join us August 30 through the 31st in Pasadena, California at Providence Christian College, where we're going to explore. You will be equipped and challenged to take Christ's lordship to the streets where everyday life is lived. Every square inch of creation is Christ. So let's live like it and let's do it together.
Doctor Ventrella, you prefaced the symposium with this quote by CS Lewis. There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. And you've chosen Doctor Sandlin, who is the president and founder of Christian Cultural Leadership, which transforms christians to transform culture. He's the author of a number of books, prolific writer and speaker. He's a dear friend of ours. But you chose him to engage on an issue of it looks like to be on politics.
Could you talk a little bit about what you've assigned for Doctor Sandlin for this event?
[00:02:08] Speaker C: Sure. And I think you misspoke, Joshua. I think Andrew's organization is the center for Cultural Leadership, which is an explicitly christian educational organization. But the idea is that every square inch means every square inch. There's no excluded area, no area of neutrality. And oftentimes evangelicals will think about, well, I need to comport myself as a Christian and I need to date as a Christian and I need to have a marriage that is Christianized and I need to my children in a christian way or educate them in a christian way. And then we get a little weird when it comes to what about the public square, the ordering of the public square? Does in fact, Christ being the Lord impact that? And our answer at truth exchange and at the center for Cultural Leadership is in fact, yes, it does. And I can think of no better person who's thought through these issues passionately, yet without histrionics. To help us understand the structure of public ordering, where we are in today's culture and what is needful for going forward.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: You had a write up about what Doctor Sandlin's going to be doing is he's going to be providing attendees with this overview of public ordering and why the options of pagan cultural Marxism or new rights statism is not the only options. And so, Doctor Stanley, if you could break that down for our listeners. We're in an election year and many are feeling quite in panic mode.
We don't want to have somebody who is obviously not competent for office on the left, and we don't want someone who's not competent on the right. Should we go into panic.
And some of these young people are arguing for some.
What I'm seeing, or was being called as christian nationalism, as the, the alternative. And so let's, let's dissect some of those issues. Like what? Well, let's talk about first, pagan cultural Marxism. Could you talk just briefly, what is cultural Marxism?
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Well, we can think of two wings of Marxism. There's what we might call classical Marxism, or economic Marxism.
And most who are familiar with the old Soviet Union, communist China and the other eastern european states will know what that is. It's the attempt to forcibly equalize incomes. And the state becomes the owner of everything.
And the great enemy is selfishness. Man's inherent selfishness. And by any means possible, politically or physically, beat selfishness out of people so that they share the wealth, actually, as it turned out, share the poverty. So classical Marxism is essentially an economic vision. But what a lot of people don't know is that Marx also wrote about a deeper vision, and is earlier, sometimes called his Paris writings. And that comes down to us in cultural Marxism. So Marx didn't only believe in forcibly equalizing incomes and wealth and the economy. He believed basically in equalizing everything, including from the very beginning, the equalizing of God and man. Of course, he didn't believe in God, but he believed basically that God and man are the same thing. That man himself must become his own God. The one of the original, at least in our more recent context, form of one ism, actually.
So a cultural Marxism is seen today in the whole gender fluidity movement and the whole idea of homosexual marriage, so called, in radical feminism.
In all of these attempts, basically to destroy distinctions. That's what cultural Marxism is about. It's about destroying distinctions.
It's a little deceptive. However, it doesn't want to destroy the distinction between the state and everybody else, because it needs the state in order to enforce this. Okay, so that's kind of a quick basis of the idea of cultural Marxism. And of course it's heavily influenced the Democratic Party.
It would not be fair to say that all in that party consciously know about it, most probably don't. But they've all been influenced by cultural Marxism, which of course originally was an academic vision. And as always, but prevailing academic visions eventually filter down to the rest of society and it's certainly filtered down into the modern left.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Okay. And then the other is the issue that you'll be, one of the issues you'll be tackling its mirror or its counter is the new right statism, which you just mentioned. In cultural Marxism, the state is an issue. So it seems like on both hands here, statism is a deep problem.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah. It becomes a mirror image. And in some ways, some of them acknowledge that they recognize the statism on the left. And some of them will say, well, it's about time we had our own version of statism and we need to capture the bully club of the state to beat them at their own game. That's kind of the language they believe in use. We need to use their methods so they will. Some of them have even gone so far as to say we need a Christian or a Protestant, Franco, referring to, of course, the fascist dictator during much of the 20th century, second half of the 20th century in Spain to sort of enforce God's law and God's truth. By the way, generally they don't mean God's law in the Bible. Some do, but most of them refer to so called natural law that must be enforced. And for many of them that includes explicitly an ethno state. So there's the racial element.
So I must say that those on the left that accuse those of us who believe in influencing culture of white christian nationalism are often way off target slander. But I must say that in a few cases, that is correct. There are christian nationalists that do believe in white christian nationalism. And of course, we strongly oppose that.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Okay, why is statism bad?
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Well, let me count the ways.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: I mean, you know, so compared to all kinds of, there's many kinds of governments and we've seen kingdoms rise and fall and the Lord raises leaders and he brings them down. We've seen monarchies, we've seen empires, we've you. So there's all kinds of different systems of government.
Why is statism more evil than the american republic and democracy?
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Help listeners understand, well, statism violates God's order.
I think maybe one of the best ways to define statism is the idea that the state is the best institution for solving virtually every social problem.
If you have healthcare that's not, quote, equitably distributed, well, the state can solve that. If you have a great national pandemic, all the state can solve that. If you have problems with educational levels and not everybody's getting the right level of education, well, the state can solve that. So the notion is, if there's a problem, well, let's let the state, and I don't mean particular states, but generally in today's society, the national government can solve that. Well, according to the Bible, the state does have a biblical role to play both in the Old Testament and of course in Romans 13. And I would add even an ungodly state has to be respected. Doesn't mean it should be. It should be ungodly, of course. But God has established a state, but that's only one government among many. And according to the Bible, the state's role is extremely limited. It basically is to punish certain external evildoing.
The state essentially is not a positive institution in society. Or we could say it's positive to the extent that it protects the God given rights of others. But other than that, the idea that the state should be doing all sorts of good things to help people, that's a false view. That's the responsibility of other governments. Now, I've used that term in an unusual way because we sometimes when we hear that term government, we think of Washington DC or California, Sacramento. But according to the Bible, the state is only one government among many. The main government, of course, is God's sovereign government everywhere. And of course then the new covenant, Christ's government. And then there's self government, self governed individuals under God's sovereign authority. And then there's family government. God establishes that order. And then there's church government. Leadership by elders or others use different language, but church government, and there's business government, in fact, there's government everywhere. Artistic government, scientific government and the scientific community.
And then there's civil government or state government. It has one role, basically, and that is to protect. And largely the us founders got it right, I believe life, liberty and happiness, these are pre political, God given rights. And should the state transcend this and start inching itself into other things, it's violating God's established order. And that's what we see, of course, almost everywhere now in the west and certainly all over the world. But tragically, in the case of the United States and England, for example, where we got a number of not all, but a number of these ideas, tragically because our founders understood that the role of the state should be severely limited. And so when both on the left and on the right we have statism, the state rushing to the state to get a big bully club to beat everybody down into submission, we see statism.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: So for Jeff and for you, Andrew, is there some sort of recovery with believers undertaking politically or.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Well, the main recovery is never political, but although there's a political dimension to it, I would say the main recovery is the recovery, the importance of self government and these other governments. For too long the church has said, well, in issues, for instance, of charity, well, we're not going to deal with those issues of people in society that really need charity. We have to send missionaries or we have to get the gospel out and therefore let the state do that. But in the Bible it's very clear that charity begins first at home, old adage that really does support a biblical truth, but also, and secondarily, the church and other what we call private institutions of what we today call civil society. Now, you asked about does politics have a role? Yes, and there's a little ironic twist here. We should be working to elect politicians who shouldn't be primarily concerned about politics. You see, that's the problem. We elect politicians who become obsessed with politics. We should be electing people who say, okay, I'm here basically to depoliticize this great leviathan and reduce the state back to its biblical limits. Now there are very few that do that today, but that's what we should be working toward.
[00:13:25] Speaker C: I think that's right. I think that we have to understand two things. You can go off the rails in two directions. One is kind of anarcho capitalist idea that markets solve everything. That's not a biblical view. Markets are to be virtuous, subject to the reign and rule of Christ, so that we understand that the state, in fact, is legitimate. The thing is, though, it has a delimited and derived function under the law of God, it's limited in its jurisdiction, it's limited in its power. In exchange for those limitations, the state is given a monopoly on coercion or what we might even call violence. And so we do not want a leviathan that has a monopoly on violence trying to impose all these sorts of things. And I think we can learn a lot from history here because every time we've seen that sort of unified statist dream come true, it actually produces nightmares, tyranny and those sorts of things. And so we can, from an empirical standpoint, critique this. But also, just from a normative standpoint, the scriptures make it quite clear the role of the state. And as Andrew said, and I want to emphasize it, it is to deal with particular external behaviors, not with status, not with beliefs, not with convictions, but actual conduct. And the Bible also, of course, superimposes upon that what we would call today a due process, that there has to be credible, multiple witnesses. And so even in the legitimate exercise of authority, the state's role is quite limited. And through those things, Paul says that the state is a terror to those who do these bad things. That's to say there's a deterrent effect. So when we see the state doing what it ought to be doing and doing it conducively to justice, it benefits the common good. And in fact, the common good includes a limited state and individual liberty. And this is where the folks in the new right get it exactly wrong. They invert it in that way.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Okay, it'd be fair then to say that what you both have described as the alternative to the pagan cultural Marxism on the left and the right wing or extreme right wing statism on the right is a christian liberalism.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Well, I would call it classical liberalism, which was influenced by Christianity. That is the classical liberalism of the us founders, for example. We shouldn't be turned off by that term liberalism. I don't mean by that modern liberalism and modern progressivism, but it basically means freedom and liberty and always virtuous liberty, liberality within the bounds of God's moral laws. The founders all believe the idea that all of the founders were Christians is false. That's an overinflated claim. Some of them clearly were not. But all of them were influenced by what we today would call a christian worldview. That was the air that they breathed, that breathe. That was their conceptual environment. So when they founded the United States, these were the ideas that they hammered in the reality of original sin and the division of powers and checks and balances and the dignity of the individual created in God's image and protector for minorities and all of these things. And this essentially is a biblical notion of the state. So I would not go so far as to say that classical liberalism is the identical biblical order. I don't know that you can even have that in a fallen world. But it's closest, in my view, it's closest to what the Bible teaches about the distinctives of a biblical and a christian order. And the interesting thing about this is this is not a Christianity that is imposed just like you have on the left. The notion that you have to have a neo paganism, a cultural Marxism that's imposed. And on the new right, you have a Christianity that is imposed. But in the Bible, Christianity is never imposed. Christianity is embraced.
Of course there is a theocracy. Jesus Christ is the ruler over all things. But as far as particular political orders, the faith has to be embraced. And that's what the founders believe. And that's why they stressed not only political liberty and economic liberty, but religious liberty, again, within the bounds of God's moral law. And they weren't always consistent about it. They oftentimes discriminated against Roman Catholics. It was right to get rid of that. But the principle itself was a sound principle. And in my view, that's one reason God has blessed the United States just so dramatically because of those founding truths. And I think that's what we need to restore in this country.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: What about, or what is the relationship of multiculturalism or pluralism? How does that work? Because a Christian wants to see things, that distribution of power done properly. We don't want some dystopian nightmare. However, at the same time, and there's concern that, well, if we have live in a liberal society, then therefore we should be okay with drag queen hour or we should be okay with Hindus in public office. And shouldn't we as Christians be opposed to that because, well, Hindus have a monist worldview. And doesn't that open then the door to all kinds of pagan ideology being inscribed into the public square?
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Well, no country in the end will be able to survive the, the undermining of its own foundational principles.
So if the question is, is it possible in a classically liberal order for that order to be overrun, if people eventually get away from the order? Well, of course, the founders themselves said that the american system is not designed to hammer away at everybody that disagrees with it.
If 80% of the country became marxist within 50 years, we would have a marxist society.
And incidentally, that's also true of dictatorships. They can't survive either. We saw that with the fall of the Soviet Union and others, they can't survive widespread violation of their founding principles either. So I think it's going back, though. I think it's important to distinguish between structural pluralism and substantive pluralism. The Bible certainly supports structural pluralism. That is, that everybody should be treated equally under the law. That's the short definition of it, whether you're hindu or whether you're an atheist islamic. This is true with Old Testament Israel. One law for the stranger, one law for the people of God. That's God's order and just weights and balances.
The unbelievers don't have to pay more money or higher taxes.
That's just flatly contrabiblical. So everybody, I don't care what your religious view or irreligious view is, must be treated equally and fairly under the law. But that's very different from substantive pluralism, which is the idea, essentially, of multiculturalism or relativism. It doesn't matter what God you believe in. All laws are. Okay, well, that's inherently self defeating and self frustrating, so that's false. So the oddity of this is, in a christian, a free christian political order, a knowledgeable atheist should prefer to live in it rather than an atheistic order. Because if you think about it, an atheist in a christian order, we would protect his right to property, his right to liberty, economic liberty. We don't force him to come to church. As long as he lives within the moral law of God, doesn't murder, doesn't pillage, doesn't steal, doesn't defraud and all that, he is free to live his life as he wants to. However, in an order built on atheistic premises, none of that's guaranteed. Why would it be guaranteed? I mean, the most atheistic orders of the 20th century were the marxist orders. So on the principle of atheism, there's no basis for liberty or freedom or virtue, of course. Whereas in a christian order, there is the basis for both.
[00:21:47] Speaker C: A couple points. I want to just highlight that excellent explication. Number one, the phrase becomes very important in the Declaration of Independence that to secure these rights, those are the pre political rights bestowed by the creator.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Andrew, do I still have you?
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Jeff? You got me.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Yeah, sorry.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: For a while.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: My saying was that after the declaration talks about rights bestowed by the creator, that is to say, their pre political rights, governments are instituted among men to secure them. And so that is the biblical understanding of the role of the state. The other thing, the other term I would inject here with respect to the question you posed was, this is the kingdom of God is delightfully diverse. There are every tongue, every kindred, every tribe. Our cultures come with it. God called those in his image to develop and cultivate and exercise dominion in a myriad of ways. And God didn't specify the particulars. He just said, go live under me and do these things. And of course, after the Noah flood, that was reinstituted. Same sort of idea. And so we're going to have this diversity. The question is, do you live under an applicable rule of law that treats everyone with the same dignity. And frankly, this may be a curveball, but given some events that have happened this week, Andrew, this idea that we respect the moral law of God, including the Imago Dei, even for the least of ease, we've seen the, a political party which poses as the more conservative party now essentially exclude a particular category of the human person from legal protection. What do you have to think of? What do you say about that?
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Yes, well, it's, I was just a little stunned, not wholly stunned, but a little stunned when JD Vance, senator allegedly pro life, wrote a fascinating book, hillbilly Elegy, who by all accounts is angling to be Trump's vice presidential choice, came out in favor of just the last couple of days, favor of the abortion pill. And there are a number of other generally reliably pro life politicians. Even Marco Rubio, though not on that issues, even said he's okay with stripping out the abortion language and the new republican platform.
It's just remarkable. You know, Jeff, I was thinking this morning, I'm not sure that Josh would be old enough to remember this, but you will. You remember back in the sixties and seventies, we sort of derisively referred to the country club Republicans. These were the Nelson Rockefellers, Nixon and others. And a number of them were so, quote, quote, pro choice. So we did have, we're kind of reverting to that when Ronald Reagan came along, of course, strongly, incontestably pro life. And so the Republican Party became solidly pro life. No one could get elected. You wouldn't even bring up, the idea was clear, to be a Republican was to be pro life. Sadly, sort of, we're flipping back around, not to country club Republicans, but to some MAGA Republicans who, in order to go along with Trump's idea, stated very plainly in the debate with Biden. It's interesting. I think people allow the fact of Biden's obvious stumble and dementia there. Whatever your political views, people should recognize that to kind of shield themselves and kind of forget about what Trump said. He said, he was asked about this bill. He said very plainly, oh, no, I'm not against it. No problem with that at all. Well, Jeff, I think you pointed out that about roughly 60% of the abortions in the country are achieved by this. And I can only see that is if it's not reversed, is increasing the notion of having to go to an abortion clinic. Well, why should that be necessary anymore? Maybe get the pill over the counter. I mean, it's monstrous to think about this. I'd like your listeners to think it's the destruction of human life. This is a creational principle. I mean, the Bible makes this very clear, in fact, one of the earliest laws ever established by God in the book of Genesis. And yet how blithely so called conservatives hold it. But as I point out today in a Facebook post, conservative or pro choice? Pick one. You can't be both. So these folks, some of them claim to be christians that are supporting this viewpoint are just false, and they need to be called out, and they need to be publicly opposed and exposed. And to people who say, well, you're lending aid and comfort to the Biden campaign, we are not. We're standing on the authority of the word of God. And if we refuse to hold those who support this viewpoint to the authority of the law of God, if we refuse to criticize them because we fear what might happen politically, we have surrendered all biblical principle.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So given that where things are at politically, it seems we, you either have the option to vote democratic or republican. And obviously, as a 501 c three ministry, we cannot tell people which way to vote.
Christians ought to pray.
But what then should what? How then shall we vote?
How do christians do? And this kind of predicament?
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Well, when I pastored, I had always, you know, the founders, I mean, the ministers of the founding of the country would often preach election day sermons. Some people forget that. I have a couple books in my library, Jeff, you might have them by let's on the political sermons at the US founding. Big, thick book. I think it's got close to a thousand pages, list various sermons.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: So I've got that book.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. It's truly remarkable. Worth looking through. So I would preach election day sermons, and I would say, I'm going to tell you how to vote today. I would say, for example, I'm not going to tell you the person, but number one, vote for the person and policy that will protect human life, vote for the person in polity that will protect the integrity of the family, vote for the person in policy that will stand authoritatively on the moral law of God, and so forth, so we can tell people how to vote. So I'm happy to say, my own personal view, not speaking for CCL, but I won't vote for any candidate that is as cavalier as both of these major candidates are. I'm not saying that someone in a state, so called swing state, might not want to vote, for example, for Donald Trump. If you feel that way, I can't bind your conscience, but in my view, there is a corrupting influence to this man that has been seen despite, and I recognize I'm not, when he's in office, not anti Trump. I'm sometimes Trump. I am utterly delighted by his Supreme Court picks. I believe they're quite possibly the best Supreme Court picks, not in our lifetime, but perhaps in the entire history of the United States.
These are not, by the way, issues deep in the belly for him. This is why he wisely farmed this out to the federal society and they did a masterful job. One of the great socio political coups of the 21st century, and it will be recognized as that. But having said that, for Donald Trump, there are basically only two big issues. And let's be fair to him and say he's been consistent on these. That's immigration and trade. Those are the things that really, really drive him. Not pro life, not pro family or any such thing. Those are the issues. And in my view, he's wrong on both. The issues he feels most strongly about. He's basically wrong on both, though we do need a responsible immigration policy. I won't get into that. But anyway, so we have to be driven by principle. We don't have to, shouldn't be driven by partisanship. And that's my answer and I'm sticking to it.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Excellent.
Well, folks, be sure to join us in August 30 through the 31st in Pasadena, California, at Providence Christian College. Every square inch of creation is Christ. Let's live like it, and let's do it together. Thank you, gentlemen, for being on the show today. This concludes the 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 Guillot, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
