Thursday, October 10, 2024

Welcome to Point of View’s show hosted by Liberty McArtor. Her first guest is Joshua Ryan Butler. Joshua brings us his new book, The Party Crasher: How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual & Redeems Our Partisan Divide.
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[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View, and now, your guest host for Point of View.
[00:00:22] Welcome to Point of View. I'm Liberty McCarter, sitting in for Kirby Anderson today.
[00:00:26] You may recognize me from the Millennial Roundtable or sometimes the Weekend Edition,
[00:00:31] and I also host the Know Why Podcast, which is a partner ministry with Point of View.
[00:00:35] But I'm always so thankful for the opportunity to be with you on the Point of View broadcast.
[00:00:41] We have some important topics and excellent guests that we're going to be speaking with today.
[00:00:45] Later on in the show, we'll talk with Don Schenk of The Tide about what's happening around the world with our persecuted brothers and sisters.
[00:00:53] And then later on, we'll talk to Joel Chernoff about the Joseph Project International,
[00:00:59] specifically how the war in Israel is impacting vulnerable populations in Israel a year later.
[00:01:05] So, definitely stay with us for the whole program.
[00:01:08] But right now, I'm very excited to talk to pastor and author Joshua Ryan Butler about his new book,
[00:01:16] The Party Crasher, How Jesus Disrupts Politics As Usual and Redeems Our Partisan Divide.
[00:01:22] Joshua, welcome back to Point of View.
[00:01:25] Thank you so much, Liberty. It's so great to be with you.
[00:01:27] So, I have the book. If you're watching online, you can see I'm holding it up here.
[00:01:32] I have all kinds of sticky tabs and notes in it. I marked it up.
[00:01:36] So, I definitely encourage people, if you're interested by this conversation today, to get a copy for yourself.
[00:01:42] But as it's an election year, you know, people are very focused on politics right now.
[00:01:48] And Point of View is one of many voices that encourages people to research the candidates, to engage politically, to get registered to vote.
[00:01:58] But I think your book is so important right now, Joshua, because you really speak to what is most important of all,
[00:02:05] which is making sure that we're doing all of that with Jesus at the center of our allegiance and from a truly biblical worldview.
[00:02:15] Yes, definitely. You know, I think it's so important these days.
[00:02:18] One of the driving questions for me at the book is as a pastor and just seeing in our communities, it's been how do we stay united around Jesus with families, friendships, churches, fracturing all around us?
[00:02:30] I've just seen so many occasions where, you know, so many people I know feel like going to Thanksgiving dinner is like you're heading into World War III.
[00:02:37] You're just heading into family members with different opinions.
[00:02:40] And how do we, you know, I think our positions are important, but also our posture.
[00:02:45] How do we have a posture that allows us to stay at the table with people who are maybe coming from different places and perspectives?
[00:02:51] And so I, you know, share a story in the opening of the book of a church that was in our network where half the church disappeared.
[00:02:59] You know, that 3,000 people, 1,500 members left, and they left angry.
[00:03:03] This was in the last election season.
[00:03:04] And then why, you know, the lead pastor posted an Instagram video online.
[00:03:08] And I thought it was pretty tame, but there was a small handful of seven people who, you know, kind of read it through a particular ideological grid, stuff he wasn't actually saying, but they sought to take down the church on their way out.
[00:03:20] So they started coffee shop conversations, email chains, spreading misinformation and slander.
[00:03:25] They started scouring the sermons of all 10 churches in our network, looking for any ammunition, scouring social media thieves of all the leaders and their spouses, looking for anything they could use to take down the church.
[00:03:36] And it worked eventually.
[00:03:39] You know, like there was 1,500 members out of 3,000 left angry.
[00:03:45] And this was, you know, it wasn't the church where I was leaning, but it was one that we were really close with and was part of our network.
[00:03:50] And so a lot of our people in our church had friends and family and folks who were there.
[00:03:54] And it was just heartbreaking to see the impact of division.
[00:03:58] And I wish I could say that was a one-off event, but I've talked to so many leaders nationally where it feels like this is the new church split, where churches are fracturing along political fault lines.
[00:04:07] And the major pressure points are not so much doctrinal as they are cultural.
[00:04:12] And as I mentioned earlier, that we're all feeling in kind of friendships and families.
[00:04:15] And so the question of, you know, I think obviously researching candidates and it's important that we be proactive in how we, you know,
[00:04:26] and how we approach voting and everything else in the season, but also the question of our posture of how do we come together in a world that's coming apart,
[00:04:33] where Jesus died for the unity of this church.
[00:04:35] And so how can we live into that Christlike posture that desires unity and seeks to, yeah, embody kind of the posture that Jesus had for us as his people as we come into this contentious season.
[00:04:49] Yeah, so good.
[00:04:50] And so you've got nine chapters in your book.
[00:04:52] And what I really appreciate is that you don't just, you know, criticize what's obviously a problem, which is all of this division and vitriol that has infected our politics.
[00:05:03] But you help us understand the why behind it and that there are oftentimes, you know, some legitimate concerns or fears that maybe have become center when they shouldn't, but kind of helping us understand why.
[00:05:19] And so before we go to our first break, let's rewind to 2016.
[00:05:23] It's hard to believe that was eight years ago, but I think a lot of people probably relate to the anecdote you shared and they've experienced that division.
[00:05:31] And we all know that it was different.
[00:05:33] It wasn't just like normal political disagreements.
[00:05:35] But in 2016, there really was a shift in how this started to divide us.
[00:05:39] Why do you think it was different then?
[00:05:42] Definitely.
[00:05:42] So the grid that I use, we, you know, my friend Jim and I, we used this in the last election season trying to explain what the heck has happened.
[00:05:51] And we call it the four political religions.
[00:05:54] And I found a lot of folks have found this really helpful as just kind of a way of understanding, as you mentioned, 2016 and 2020, kind of the increasing pressure itself.
[00:06:02] And here's the big idea is, you know, we tend to think of politics as left versus right, which is true.
[00:06:07] But we can miss that there's also a top-down spectrum.
[00:06:10] So if you can, listeners can imagine in their head kind of a left-to-right spectrum and then a top-down axis in the middle,
[00:06:17] which represents modernity at the top and postmodernity at the bottom.
[00:06:21] And one of the claims I make at the beginning of the book is that this modernity at postmodernity has split the traditional political divide
[00:06:28] and helps explain why some of the deepest fighting we see today is not just left versus right,
[00:06:34] but it's different camps on the left and different camps on the right.
[00:06:37] And so I describe the four quadrants that this gives rise to as kind of these four political religions that are vying for our allegiance today.
[00:06:45] And so the modern left, we have the religion of progress.
[00:06:48] And here's the creed is we can change the world.
[00:06:51] There's a strong faith in things like scientific discovery, technological advancement, strong institutions, higher education, research and public policy.
[00:06:59] This religion is most prominent in places like Silicon Valley.
[00:07:02] And we can think of like Google and Facebook and the smartphone and the tech boom and artificial intelligence and medical breakthroughs.
[00:07:09] And so I go into more detail describing how this can function like religion at times.
[00:07:14] But if you think of the modern right, this is what I call the religion of responsibility.
[00:07:18] Whose creed is pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
[00:07:21] So here there's a strong faith in personal potential, hard work, good moral values, responsibility, individual liberty.
[00:07:29] And we can think of this religion's most prominent in the suburbs.
[00:07:32] And we can think of like Wall Street, classic conservatism, the free market, business entrepreneurship.
[00:07:38] And when I was growing up, that kind of felt like the grid, right?
[00:07:41] Like those two kind of the camp.
[00:07:44] But to go to the lower quadrant, we have to talk about the shift from modernity to post-modernity.
[00:07:49] And if you're a philosophy major, you're probably going to slap me right now for how simplistic I'm about to be.
[00:07:54] But I think we get to go.
[00:07:56] Modernity is something like the scientist in a lab coat with a microscope.
[00:07:59] It's sort of a visual stereotype for modernity was all about reason and the values of the enlightenment,
[00:08:04] like the scientific method, building strong institutions.
[00:08:07] And there was this optimism that we could solve the world's problems through those things.
[00:08:11] But now post-modernity in the lower half is a reactionary movement.
[00:08:15] It saw modernity's failures, things like world wars, nuclear weapons,
[00:08:20] evil things like eugenics that were done in the name of science and progress.
[00:08:23] And so a visual stereotype for post-modernity, I think we think of an artist who's painting a picture of themselves as the artist.
[00:08:30] There's a strong emphasis here on creative self-expression.
[00:08:32] Yeah.
[00:08:33] Where if modernity was about discovering and defining the world,
[00:08:36] post-modernity is about constructing and creating one's own world.
[00:08:38] We will get into more of this explanation and fascinating discussion with Joshua Butler right after this break.
[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.
[00:09:02] Since the Hamas attack last year in Israel, the government and the IDF have been fighting in Gaza.
[00:09:07] But now Israel has also had to deal with Hezbollah to the north,
[00:09:10] which has fired more than 8,000 rockets at this small country.
[00:09:14] These indiscriminate attacks have forced thousands of Israelis to flee from the northern part of Israel.
[00:09:19] Once again, world leaders are cautioning Israel to avoid escalating this conflict.
[00:09:24] But Rich Lowry argues that the Jewish state is under no obligation to tolerate the intolerable.
[00:09:30] Instead, the country's leaders are to treat all these rocket attacks as background noise.
[00:09:35] No other country in the world would be expected to ignore such attacks on their sovereign nation.
[00:09:40] Israel cannot follow these rules.
[00:09:41] Rich Lowry asks,
[00:10:02] Rich Lowry summarizes how Israel is criticized no matter what it does.
[00:10:06] Israel hits terrorist targets from the air, and it's accused of war crimes.
[00:10:10] Israel goes in on the ground, and it's accused of war crimes.
[00:10:13] Israel does neither, opting instead to target terrorists by using their own devices against them,
[00:10:18] and it's accused of war crimes.
[00:10:20] Perhaps you can sense the frustration, but you also need to experience the fear.
[00:10:25] The guide we use for our trips to Israel lives in the region where these rockets are landing.
[00:10:29] Imagine how you would feel if rockets were landing in your community and world leaders were cautioning you to show restraint.
[00:10:37] This is the situation in Israel today.
[00:10:40] I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.
[00:10:46] For a free copy of Kirby's booklet, A Biblical View on Antisemitism, go to viewpoints.info slash antisemitism.
[00:10:54] Viewpoints.info slash antisemitism.
[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.
[00:11:04] Welcome back to Point of View.
[00:11:05] I'm Liberty McCarter filling in for Kirby Anderson today, and right now we're talking with Joshua Ryan Butler,
[00:11:10] author of the new book, The Party Crasher, How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual and Redeems Our Partisan Divide.
[00:11:18] As a reminder, you can go to pointofview.net to look up any of the guests that we are speaking with today
[00:11:23] and their resources, including this book, if you'd like to get a copy for yourself, which I do recommend.
[00:11:28] So, Joshua, before the break, you were explaining how our typical kind of left-right divide
[00:11:35] that we think of the United States as being divided into has actually been divided further by modern philosophy
[00:11:44] and then postmodernism.
[00:11:46] And you were kind of explaining, okay, what are the postmodern quadrants
[00:11:50] and what are kind of the political religions that are elevated there?
[00:11:56] So finish telling us about those.
[00:11:59] Thanks, Liberty.
[00:12:00] Yes.
[00:12:00] Yeah, so we kind of walked through the religion of responsibility and religion of progress in the top,
[00:12:06] kind of the modern half.
[00:12:06] So now the bottom half, the postmodern religions, I'd say the postmodern left,
[00:12:11] I describe as the religion of identity, where here the creed is live your truth.
[00:12:15] Like don't let anyone else tell you how to live your life.
[00:12:18] This religion is most prominent in the urban core.
[00:12:20] So you can think of places like San Francisco and Boston, race and gender yard signs,
[00:12:25] like I have all around my yard or my neighborhood here, I mean, in northeast Portland.
[00:12:29] We think of figures like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Elliott Page, protests against the legacy of injustice,
[00:12:35] TikTok and Instagram posts with an ethos of self-expression.
[00:12:38] And there's still here a desire for progress like we have in the upper left,
[00:12:42] only now there's a pessimism about the ideas and institutions of modernity being able to get us there.
[00:12:47] So the focus is no longer external on those kind of things.
[00:12:51] Now the focus is internal, like look within yourself to make progress is kind of the message in this religion.
[00:12:56] So the focus is on discovering and expressing your most authentic desires.
[00:13:00] And we can think of preachers in this religion being pop icons like Lady Gaga and Little Noss X,
[00:13:06] who model the way of salvation for the masses through kind of performative self-expression and continual reinvention.
[00:13:12] And so if we go from there and move from the postmodern left to the postmodern right,
[00:13:18] I call this the religion of security.
[00:13:19] And here the creed is good fences make good neighbors.
[00:13:23] And there's a sense here that when we live in a dangerous world, we need boundaries, borders to keep people safe,
[00:13:28] a security that allows us to prosper.
[00:13:30] Insiders share codes of conduct or rules of behavior for how we live together.
[00:13:34] We should display thick bonds of loyalty to insiders and be wary of outsiders who could threaten our way of life.
[00:13:40] And so this religion is most prominent in the heartland left behind by the coastal economic movement.
[00:13:45] And we can think of things like hometown identity and jobs shipped overseas,
[00:13:49] Detroit and the decline of manufacturing, figures like Tucker Carlson and Shannon Hannity,
[00:13:54] Appalachia and the epidemic of meth addiction and unemployment.
[00:13:57] And here, because it's postmodern, there's kind of a pessimism towards institutions of modernity.
[00:14:02] And so we'll hear a lot of rhetoric or language about how, you know,
[00:14:06] the deep state government wants to take away your rights.
[00:14:09] Big Pharma Med, you know, the medicine that's pushing its pills and its vaccines on you.
[00:14:13] The fake news media is out to deceive you.
[00:14:15] The elites are out to get you.
[00:14:16] We need to kind of band together and stand up against those things.
[00:14:19] And so in sum, we have, you know, the religion of progress, religion of responsibility, of identity, and of security.
[00:14:27] And the question that I ask, you know, in the book is kind of, well, the big question,
[00:14:33] which quadrant does Jesus belong in?
[00:14:35] And the claim to the gospel would be that Jesus doesn't belong to these values.
[00:14:39] These values belong to Jesus.
[00:14:40] And I want to suggest that each of these values has something good to bring to the table.
[00:14:44] We actually see in the Garden of Eden, we see progress and responsibility and identity and security.
[00:14:50] We see those in the biblical stories, values that God has.
[00:14:53] But we also see that there's a danger when we make an idol out of any of those values,
[00:14:57] when we kind of uproot them out of God's creation and design and make them kind of an ultimate thing
[00:15:02] that we order our whole world around.
[00:15:05] Anything that we turn into an idol can become destructive.
[00:15:09] An idolatrous that distances us from Jesus and his world, a Greek havoc in our world around us.
[00:15:15] And so that's where I want to suggest that when we do that, Jesus is the party crasher.
[00:15:19] He tears down those dividing walls and those idolatrous barriers that we've set up,
[00:15:25] and that we're feeling the pressure of.
[00:15:28] As you mentioned, I think in the last few election seasons, we've increasingly felt this pressure of things becoming more divided,
[00:15:33] more fractured, and people spending billions of dollars to try and pull our allegiance into these different directions.
[00:15:41] And so a lot of the rest of the book is going, okay, if that's sort of the lay of the land right now,
[00:15:45] then how do we stay united and come together in a world that's coming apart?
[00:15:48] Yeah, and I think that is so helpful, too, just to think in terms of those four Americas, as you say,
[00:15:56] because like you said, those things like progress, responsibility, identity, security, those are not bad.
[00:16:04] But I think they can also help us see, like, if we are talking to somebody that maybe belongs in one of those other quadrants,
[00:16:11] instead of just getting frustrated of, you know, how are you not seeing this the way I'm seeing it,
[00:16:18] or why are you, you know, so messed up in your theology?
[00:16:22] Maybe use those guides to realize maybe where their point of fear is or their point of need is,
[00:16:30] because Jesus is, like you said, the one that fulfills those things perfectly in all of us.
[00:16:35] And so I think that that is just really helpful.
[00:16:38] And you have a lot of helpful, practical tips, and I want to talk about those some more later in the interview for approaching hard conversations.
[00:16:47] But one thing that you mention in the book is that you're not saying we shouldn't be involved in politics
[00:16:54] or that we shouldn't talk about politics, but there is a difference between a political lean and then a bow.
[00:17:02] And I really like that distinction.
[00:17:04] And how can we tell if we are kind of falling into a bow, so to speak, rather than just having our political leaning?
[00:17:14] Great.
[00:17:15] That's so great.
[00:17:15] Thank you, Liberty.
[00:17:16] That's a wonderful question.
[00:17:17] Yeah, I do.
[00:17:18] One of the claims in the book or the call in the book is I believe Jesus calls you to, calls us to bring your lean, but to submit your bow.
[00:17:25] And your lean is your perspective.
[00:17:27] It's obviously by our experience or a lot of factors, but your bow is where your ultimate allegiance lies.
[00:17:33] And I think as we bring our lean, it's helpful to recognize that Jesus called disciples with different political means.
[00:17:41] He called blue-collar fishermen and white-collar doctors.
[00:17:46] He called to himself zealots who wanted to overthrow the empire and tax collectors who were maintaining the status quo of the empire.
[00:17:54] And that was intentional on Jesus' part.
[00:17:56] We can miss how revolutionary that was back in the day, but back then, these groups wanted to kill each other.
[00:18:01] So I like to think of it, it's almost like Jesus was inviting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ben Shapiro into a small group and going,
[00:18:07] okay, now you guys have me in common.
[00:18:09] You've got to learn how to work with that.
[00:18:10] And it's not like those leanings went away overnight.
[00:18:13] You know, like they, I imagine the disciples after a long day of ministry with Jesus sitting around the campfire and processing everything that was happening,
[00:18:19] and they brought up those leanings with them.
[00:18:21] And I don't think Jesus was surprised.
[00:18:23] It wasn't like he's like, oh, my gosh, how did a delegate in here?
[00:18:25] You know, or, oh, wow, how did I miss it?
[00:18:27] The tax booker got me.
[00:18:28] No, Jesus was intentionally doing that because I believe Jesus' goal, his endgame in the gospel is reconciliation.
[00:18:34] It's to reconcile to himself a diverse group of people yet who have him in common and are increasingly being conformed to the image of Christ.
[00:18:42] Their lives are becoming more and more aligned with his values and his kingdom.
[00:18:45] That's a process that takes place over time.
[00:18:47] And so bringing our leaning, in light of that, I think one of the quickest signs that your lean has become a vow is your quickness to break fellowship when someone disagrees with you.
[00:18:59] You know, and, again, we're seeing this right now in our families, in our friendships, in our churches, just the quickness to kind of, I just can't be around that person anymore.
[00:19:07] I can't go back to, you know, a conversation with them and are because of whatever, what they posted on Facebook or their particular political view or this thing that they said.
[00:19:16] We're really becoming, I think, very quickly and easily offended, which is maybe understandable in our culture.
[00:19:22] But if we have Christ in us, the spirit of the living God in us, that should give us the internal resources and ability to move towards those we disagree with and stay at the table together.
[00:19:34] And I think one of the quickest signs that our lean has become a vow is when we're just so quick to break fellowship, you know, with people who see the world differently.
[00:19:45] I give an example, you know, of this in the book of, I think, when our filter, we need to be able to watch our filter.
[00:19:54] Because, you know, I show a story of in the 2020 election season, we had someone, a guest at our church, and he was really angry.
[00:20:01] He approached us and was like, why do you guys have these All Lives Matter posters all over your building?
[00:20:07] And I was thinking, what All Lives Matter posters?
[00:20:10] He's like, you guys have All Lives Matter posters all over your building.
[00:20:13] He was coming more from the left, kind of postmodern religion of identity.
[00:20:17] He's like, you guys have these posters all over your building.
[00:20:20] And I'm like, did we get graffitied or tagged?
[00:20:22] What happened?
[00:20:23] And he just watched these posters.
[00:20:25] And he came to show us, and our vision statement for the church for over 10 years has been, all of life is all for Jesus.
[00:20:34] All life is all for Jesus.
[00:20:35] And so we were saying, all of life is all for Jesus.
[00:20:37] But his filter was distorting that.
[00:20:39] And he was hearing instead something that we weren't saying, he was hearing a political message of all lives matter.
[00:20:44] So his ideological grid or filter was distorting what he was hearing.
[00:20:48] And he was hearing through a very unshartable lens and coming with kind of accuracy.
[00:20:53] And, you know, two weeks later, we had someone in the church who was on progressive sanctification, which is the idea that we don't become sanctified or holy overnight.
[00:21:06] It's progressive.
[00:21:08] It takes time.
[00:21:08] And he made this very clear what he was talking about in the message.
[00:21:11] But in the end, there was a woman who was just irate.
[00:21:13] And she was coming more from the postmodern right, religious security, going, why are you saying if I'm becoming thinkabout, I'll be becoming more progressive?
[00:21:19] That's not what we were saying.
[00:21:21] Right.
[00:21:22] So, yeah, definitely.
[00:21:23] We have to look at our filters and how are we seeing the world.
[00:21:26] We'll continue this conversation with Joshua Butler right after this break.
[00:21:31] In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas.
[00:21:40] London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon.
[00:21:48] London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually.
[00:21:54] Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports.
[00:22:00] Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers.
[00:22:04] Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth.
[00:22:09] It is truth for all of life.
[00:22:11] Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today?
[00:22:16] Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox
[00:22:21] when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net slash signup.
[00:22:27] Every weekday, in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time.
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[00:22:48] Point of View will continue after this.
[00:22:58] You are listening to Point of View.
[00:23:03] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.
[00:23:10] And now, here again, your guest host for Point of View.
[00:23:15] Welcome back to Point of View.
[00:23:17] I'm Liberty McCarter, and we are interviewing Joshua Ryan Butler on his book, The Party Crasher.
[00:23:21] We've been talking about kind of a new way of understanding the divides, the political divides in our culture,
[00:23:29] and then how as Christians we can deal with that.
[00:23:32] And so, Joshua, right before the break, you were giving us some kind of humorous examples,
[00:23:37] but probably relatable for a lot of people listening on how easy it can be to misunderstand each other or to really just look at things through a political ideology lens rather than a biblical lens or rather than to see the truth.
[00:23:55] And so, this leads to frustration.
[00:23:58] This can lead to misunderstanding.
[00:24:00] And so, one of the things that you include in the book is what I think is a very helpful guide for having hard political conversations,
[00:24:10] especially with believers who maybe hold a difference of opinion than you.
[00:24:14] Or maybe you've been hurt.
[00:24:15] Maybe they misunderstood something you said, and now they're, you know, spreading things about you that aren't true.
[00:24:22] But how can we facilitate or engage in conversations that can actually work toward repair rather than just staying divided?
[00:24:33] That's great.
[00:24:34] Yeah.
[00:24:34] So, one of the things that we developed last election season that we're using, again, this one, is called a Christian political commitment.
[00:24:42] And this is actually available as a free download on my website if you want.
[00:24:45] Just to access this and have that as a free resource to use.
[00:24:49] But these were basically 10 commitments that we asked our church to sign on to.
[00:24:54] Just going, hey, would you sign on to this about our posture that we're going to hold in this election season?
[00:25:00] So, these 10 commitments, they were not so much about what positions to hold as rather about the posture with which we were going to hold them.
[00:25:07] And we jokingly called them the 10 political commandments.
[00:25:10] It's, you know, joking because we don't want them to be confused with the actual 10 commandments that God gives at Mount Sinai.
[00:25:16] But seriously, in the sense that, like, these are actually things that God commands people in Scripture.
[00:25:21] So, we have, you know, biblical foundation for all of these that we include in the commitment.
[00:25:26] But to give an example of a few of these 10 commitments.
[00:25:29] One, the first one was worship.
[00:25:31] I commit my allegiance to King Jesus over all idols and ideologies.
[00:25:34] We've been kind of talking about that the first half of the show, right?
[00:25:38] We were talking about committing our ultimate allegiance to Jesus.
[00:25:41] But another one, a little later, was the image of God.
[00:25:43] Saying, I commit to honoring the image of God in all people by treating them with respect and abstaining from dehumanizing caricatures.
[00:25:50] And I think this speaks to what you brought up earlier, Liberty.
[00:25:53] Like, the power that can come when we're seeing, even if we disagree with someone,
[00:25:57] seeing that there may be something in their leaning, the quadrant that they lean towards may have some good gifts to bring to the table.
[00:26:02] And seeing them as someone who we might disagree with, but actually there may be some good things that we can learn from.
[00:26:08] And we can approach them with curiosity.
[00:26:10] Seeing them not as just kind of a, I don't know, in our culture today, I think we're encouraged to see them as,
[00:26:15] ah, an idiot who's destroying the world.
[00:26:16] You know, and actually seeing them as, oh, someone created in the image of God with dignity.
[00:26:19] And I want to kind of learn from their perspective and approach them with curiosity rather than just accusation as an image bearer.
[00:26:27] Another one, the next one was biblical wisdom.
[00:26:29] Saying, I commit to having my views challenged by the biblical story rather than using the Bible to proof text my predetermined positions.
[00:26:36] And we found this was a big one, you know, going like there is a tendency.
[00:26:39] I think one danger that's fracturing us is, you know, when your lean has become a bow,
[00:26:44] another sign of that can be when you're listening to pundits more than scripture.
[00:26:48] You know, like when your vision of the world is being more shaped by whatever pundits you're listening to than the biblical story.
[00:26:54] And I found that different quadrants tend to have their favorite areas of scripture they like to focus on.
[00:26:59] You know, so the progress quadrant likes to focus on Genesis 1 and 2 and where creators of culture
[00:27:05] and God's calling us to partner with him and cultivating and strutting creation and taking it somewhere.
[00:27:11] But they can tend to be softer at times on exploring the reality of sin and its ramifications of the world.
[00:27:17] So the responsibility quadrant can really like Paul's epistles and the Proverbs that talk a lot about righteousness and responsibility
[00:27:24] and what it looks like that we're called to live at in our life, but can focus less on the prophets
[00:27:29] and kind of them calling out some of the realities of injustice in our world at kind of broader social levels.
[00:27:35] The identity quadrant really likes the prophets and all, you know, but can shy away from Jesus' command to deny,
[00:27:42] calling to deny yourself, to pick up your cross and follow him and to die to yourself that you might truly live,
[00:27:48] including some of your desires.
[00:27:49] And the security quadrant can really focus at times on areas like spiritual warfare passages and the apocalyptic,
[00:27:58] but can minimize, you know, some of the other areas of scripture that we've been looking at just now.
[00:28:03] And so really going, man, we need the whole Bible for our understanding of God's world.
[00:28:09] And there's an invitation here to go on.
[00:28:10] I want to actually not just use kind of selected little anecdotes from scripture to kind of back up my own position,
[00:28:16] but I want to immerse myself in the biblical story and let that maybe critique some of the narratives
[00:28:21] that the different quadrants and political religions of our day are trying to narrate a different understanding of the world to me.
[00:28:28] I want my view of the world to be shaped more by God's story and seek biblical wisdom.
[00:28:32] Yeah, that is so convicting because there is so much information.
[00:28:38] And, you know, here at Point of View, we want to help you, you know, digest that information from a biblical perspective.
[00:28:45] But, you know, nothing is going to top reading the Bible for yourself if you want a biblical worldview.
[00:28:52] That is just so true.
[00:28:54] And then you can see when scripture is also being misapplied by others, maybe for political ends.
[00:29:00] And you include some examples of that in your book as well.
[00:29:02] And I think we've all seen that happen.
[00:29:04] But in the few minutes we've got before we go to the next break, I wanted to just kind of touch on how you say that we've lost our sight,
[00:29:12] lost sight of our role as peacemakers.
[00:29:15] And I want to talk about this because I think that some people may think, OK, how can I realistically be a peacemaker?
[00:29:24] Maybe with somebody who I really, really disagree with and I just think that they're wrong.
[00:29:28] Can I maintain my conscience and commitment to what I think is right and be a peacemaker at the same time?
[00:29:38] Great.
[00:29:38] No, definitely.
[00:29:39] And, you know, the last four of the template requirements really deal with peacekeeping and peacemaking, I mean.
[00:29:45] And there's a whole chapter devoted to that.
[00:29:47] And one of those is, you know, I commit to face-to-face conflict resolution rather than vitriolic arguments in social media or talking behind someone's back.
[00:29:55] And I found, oh, my goodness, last election season, there were so many conflicts within the church or relationships with people, you know, in our community where it's like, oh, man, just a quick phone call would have resolved that, you know, like because there was misunderstanding.
[00:30:10] But the tendency is the reality I found where, hey, did you hear someone said this?
[00:30:16] Or, man, I think this is where, you know, like the assumption of where someone's coming from.
[00:30:21] And that kind of gossip, slander, whatever, it can just build and resentment, bitterness build.
[00:30:28] And then, you know, I share an example.
[00:30:34] You know, the whole chapter on this is built on a real story from our church where a whole group developed this big concern because they thought someone in one of the teachers in the church had said something extreme in a private class.
[00:30:47] And then once, six months later, once it came out, like they realized, oh, he never actually said that.
[00:30:53] Never actually meant that.
[00:30:53] Never, you know, and it was just, but it built into this huge thing that was disruptive and whatever.
[00:30:59] And so, and I've heard so many stories after story after story like that.
[00:31:02] And I love how Jesus in Matthew 18, he shows us how to deal with conflict.
[00:31:06] And he says, you know, if you have an issue, like go and talk to the person directly, you know?
[00:31:11] And so I think our first step should be, man, even just a quick phone call, five minutes.
[00:31:17] Hey, I kind of heard this.
[00:31:19] Is that true?
[00:31:19] You know, and nine times out of ten, I found the person who was just like, oh, no, I didn't say it.
[00:31:23] I actually said this, and this is what I meant.
[00:31:24] Like, oh, okay, that's great.
[00:31:25] You know, and it can just prevent so much, so much thing, so many things from cascading downstream.
[00:31:30] And so one of the things we did in the last election season at our church was we created an online appointment calendar with 15-minute appointments.
[00:31:38] And we just invited, hey, if there's something you've heard, something you're confused by, something you just are wondering and want more, you know, clarity on, just create a 15-minute phone call any time during the day.
[00:31:48] We have one of our pastors available.
[00:31:49] We'd love to talk with you and address it.
[00:31:51] And what we found was that so many misunderstandings were just so easily cleared up with phone call.
[00:31:58] And honestly, there weren't even that many phone calls.
[00:32:02] But our people in our church were often talking about it, going, oh, man, I'm so grateful we have this thing.
[00:32:08] Just where I think I found so many people I think just want to be heard right now, you know.
[00:32:12] And if we can take the time to approach those conversations with curiosity and listen, one of the commitments is humble learning.
[00:32:20] I commit to being quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger as I seek to learn from the very perspectives of the body of Christ.
[00:32:26] I think that can go a long way towards diffusing other unnecessary conflict in our families and friendships if we really just approach with a posture of curiosity rather than accusation.
[00:32:37] Yeah.
[00:32:38] Yeah, that can really impact.
[00:32:40] Absolutely.
[00:32:41] That is such good advice.
[00:32:43] And I really think it harkens back to the golden rule, too.
[00:32:46] If you don't want somebody spreading rumors about you based on something that maybe they misheard, you'd want them to come to you directly.
[00:32:55] And how much conflict could be resolved if we were willing to do the same?
[00:33:01] Well, we've got one more segment coming up with Joshua Butler on his book, and we're about to go to a break.
[00:33:06] But don't forget, you can go to pointofview.net.
[00:33:09] You can find the link to his website that he was referencing where he's got that commitment if you want to download it for your church.
[00:33:16] You can also get the link to his book, which if you've had your interest peaked in this conversation so far, maybe you want to get a copy for yourself.
[00:33:23] You can do that at pointofview.net.
[00:33:25] Don't forget, we also have Point of View Highlights on Spotify where our wonderful audio engineer, Megan, compiles our most compelling interviews that you can listen to at your own convenience.
[00:33:35] So go to the website, check out those resources, and don't go anywhere because we're about to be back for more.
[00:33:42] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.
[00:34:01] Welcome back to Point of View.
[00:34:03] I'm Liberty McCarter.
[00:34:04] And as we wrap up our interview with Joshua Butler on his book, The Party Crasher, I do want to mention that in the book there are discussion questions at the end of each chapter.
[00:34:14] So if you've been listening to this interview and you think, wow, maybe this would be a good book to read through with a small group or friends from church or just friends in the neighborhood or maybe my family, it really is a good resource that is very tangible and practical with lots of wisdom that you can apply.
[00:34:34] And don't forget that you can find the resources that Joshua's talked about at his website, joshuaryanbutler.com, but you can also find a link to that at pointofview.net.
[00:34:43] So, Joshua, something that I thought was very interesting that you include in your book is the five marks of the early church.
[00:34:51] And those were great, but as you pointed out, they kind of challenge a lot of our political leanings today.
[00:34:59] Do you mind sharing what some of those are?
[00:35:02] Definitely.
[00:35:03] Yeah, I've been inspired by learning more about the early church over the years.
[00:35:06] So there's a famous historian, Larry Hurtado, who studied the early church, and he talks about in his book, Destroyer of the Gods, he talks about these five marks of the early church that he draws out.
[00:35:17] One is multi-ethnic community.
[00:35:19] So this was radical in the ancient world that you only ate with people kind of your same class, same gender, same social status.
[00:35:25] But the Christians were breaking all the rules and having these feasts with people that, you know, you would come together and from all different ethnic backgrounds.
[00:35:33] That was shocking in the ancient world.
[00:35:35] It stood out.
[00:35:36] The second is care for the poor, how they were known, the early Christians were known for caring for not only their own poor, but the poor surrounding them in the empire in a way that this was an age before social safety nets.
[00:35:48] And the emperors and others were like, oh, my gosh, look at the Christians, how they're actually carrying the poor.
[00:35:52] We need to compete.
[00:35:53] Or, you know, like it was inspiring and kind of cultural.
[00:35:56] The third was a high bar sexual ethic.
[00:35:59] You know, so you think the ancient Romans were kind of famous for being, you could say, you know, stingy with their money and, you know, not stingy with, yeah, generous with their sex, so to speak.
[00:36:11] You know, they're having a lot of, especially men, powerful, lots of sexual partners.
[00:36:14] Whereas the Christians were famous for the opposite of being generous with their money and kind of, quote, unquote, stingy with their sex, you know, reserving that for the marriage bed and having a very high bar of their sexual ethic because they believed this was designed to point to something much greater, the union with Christ that we were made for.
[00:36:30] And so it was only for the context of marriage and one man and one woman.
[00:36:33] So there was a high bar sexual ethic that confronted from social norms.
[00:36:37] And the fourth was they were pro-life with children, meaning they stood against abortion and they called out infanticide.
[00:36:44] And Christians were famous for going out to the trash heaps and picking up infants who had been discarded, which was common back then, and especially female infants for families who wanted sons.
[00:36:54] And so they would bring these children into their own family and raise them as their own.
[00:36:57] So it was like an early foster adoption movement and really powerful witness.
[00:37:02] The fifth was forgiveness and enemy love, that they forgave those who persecuted them like Jesus had forgiven them.
[00:37:10] And all these were powerful and countercultural.
[00:37:13] And what strikes me about today, those kind of five values today, is a comment, an observation that the late pastor Tim Keller made, which was, if you are, you know, if you lean left politically today, you tend to get excited about number one and two, kind of multi-ethnic community care for the poor.
[00:37:29] But you tend to start to get suspicious when people start talking about number three and four, like the sexual ethic and pro-life, right?
[00:37:35] And if you lean right politically, we can tend to get excited when people talk about number three and four, but can tend to get suspicious maybe when people start talking about or emphasizing number two in political discourse.
[00:37:46] But nobody likes number five.
[00:37:48] Nobody likes forgiveness.
[00:37:50] But the reality is that Christianity was able to hold, or the early church was able to hold all five of these together.
[00:37:56] And I believe that's an example for us as a church today.
[00:37:59] As you mentioned earlier, the calling of the book is not to become apolitical or try to be as centrist as possible.
[00:38:04] Sometimes it's holding multiple things at once, you know?
[00:38:07] And so I believe that those are examples.
[00:38:10] I'm not saying those are the only areas, but those are five examples of areas that I believe as the church we are called to hold together and be bold in and stand counterculturally, that we would hold a high bar sexual ethic, that we would be pro-life for children and the unborn and vulnerable children in our communities,
[00:38:26] that we would care for the poor and be known for generosity on that front, that we would embody and value the multi-ethnic nature of God's kingdom,
[00:38:33] which is every nation, tribe, and tongue, and part of a global people around the world with the global church,
[00:38:39] and that we would be a people of forgiveness and enemy love.
[00:38:42] And that if we actually press into all five of those things at once, I think that's going to make us countercultural as a community in our kind of public witness and our civic involvement in our society today.
[00:38:54] That's going to break some of the boxes around us.
[00:38:56] But it's areas that we can confidently be bold in and press forward in as the church to have a countercultural presence and witness in our society today.
[00:39:06] Yeah, so good.
[00:39:07] So, again, this has been an interview on The Party Crasher by Joshua Ryan Butler.
[00:39:12] It's a great book.
[00:39:13] You can go to pointofview.net and find links to get it for yourself.
[00:39:17] And I just am so glad that you've been able to join Point of View today, Joshua.
[00:39:20] And in a couple minutes before we have to wrap up this hour, I wanted to ask, as you have implemented these things in your own local church and the 10 political commitments and things like that,
[00:39:33] have you seen a difference or heard from other people kind of that their heart posture has changed as they approach politics maybe with a more healthy and biblical lens?
[00:39:45] Yes, so much so.
[00:39:46] You know, during the 2020 season, one of the things that just came alive, you know, during and after that season was – and just to say, this came out of our whole leadership team as a church working on this.
[00:39:58] And the comments to our leadership team was like, thank you so much.
[00:40:01] We felt equipped, prepared, able to navigate in to not bow to kind of cultural idols but to have a strong presence and witness and kind of a peace and stability going in.
[00:40:10] And now as we're going into this, you know, we've been doing a sermon series at our church and some different events and resources and equipping and all.
[00:40:17] And, again, we're just hearing so many of our people say, thank you so much for not shying away from the tough topics but giving us kind of a maturity and stability and a picture of how we can walk faithfully to Christ in this season.
[00:40:30] So I think it's a really powerful opportunity that as much as it can be challenging for many of us I know these days, we can feel the challenge of this election season.
[00:40:39] I actually think it's a powerful opportunity that many in our culture are hungry for seeing a different way of navigating and walking through that's not marked by the vitriol and the contentious division around us,
[00:40:51] but actually models kind of a stable, confident, the peace and the boldness and the witness that Jesus would call us to as our king.
[00:41:00] Absolutely.
[00:41:01] A great resource.
[00:41:02] The Party Crasher, How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual and Redeems Our Partisan Divide.
[00:41:07] Thank you so much for being with Point of View today, Joshua.
[00:41:11] Thank you so much, Liberty.
[00:41:12] Grateful for the conversation.
[00:41:13] So we're about to wrap up our first hour, but I definitely hope that you don't go anywhere because we have important conversations coming up in the next hour as well.
[00:41:23] We've been talking with Joshua about the American church, but one thing that we can easily forget, especially in an election season, is what's happening in the global church.
[00:41:32] And so the next hour we're going to be focusing on that a little bit.
[00:41:36] We're going to be interviewing Don Shank of a ministry called The Tide, and he's going to fill us in on some areas around the world where persecution of Christians is on the rise
[00:41:48] and some specific ways that we can be praying for them and supporting them.
[00:41:54] And then after that, we'll interview Joel Chernoff on how the ongoing war in Israel is impacting the people who live there.
[00:42:02] So if you are subscribing to Kirby's Viewpoints commentary, or perhaps you've heard that in one of the breaks of the show today, it is about Israel and the ongoing conflict.
[00:42:12] And so definitely go to pointofview.net.
[00:42:15] Go to the Viewpoints so you can get a little bit of a preview and read that from Kirby's perspective, and then we'll be diving more into that later in the show.
[00:42:23] Don't forget, we've got lots of great resources online.
[00:42:26] I mentioned a few minutes ago the Point of View Highlights podcast on Spotify.
[00:42:30] You can find a link at pointofview.net, and I might also just mention Know Why Podcast.
[00:42:35] That's what I host every week.
[00:42:37] You can find me there.
[00:42:38] You can go to knowwhypodcast.com.
[00:42:40] It's a partner ministry with Point of View, and we deal with all kinds of topics that are relevant to young adults.
[00:42:47] So if you've got somebody in your life maybe that won't listen to a two-hour broadcast, but maybe a 30-minute podcast episode,
[00:42:53] then send them either Spotify Highlights or Know Why Podcast.
[00:42:57] But don't go anywhere because we'll come back after this break with more great content on Point of View.
[00:43:03] I'm Liberty McCarter filling in for Kirby Anderson today.
[00:43:05] We'll be back in just a few minutes.
[00:43:11] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority.
[00:43:17] They say men can be women and women men.
[00:43:20] People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics.
[00:43:25] criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens.
[00:43:30] It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing.
[00:43:33] You feel like giving up.
[00:43:35] But we can't.
[00:43:36] We shouldn't.
[00:43:37] We must not.
[00:43:38] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II,
[00:43:43] never give in.
[00:43:44] Never give in.
[00:43:45] Never, never, never.
[00:43:47] Never yield to force.
[00:43:49] Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
[00:43:53] And that's what we say to you today.
[00:43:56] This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos.
[00:44:03] We can't do it alone, but together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness.
[00:44:10] Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151.
[00:44:19] Pointofview.net and 800-347-5151.
[00:44:26] Point of View will continue after this.