4 thoughts on “Knight and Rose Show – Episode 8: Does Jesus Care About Politics?”

1. As you know, I’m still not an American citizen but I am a Christian:

   Yes, absolutely: Christians should care about politics and policies.

   Sometimes I think there are Christians who like to be hipster trendy so they advocate the cause(s) du jour like Social Justice Warriors and they’re against Racism and Poverty and injustice and inequality and so on. But it’s largely all talk. If they were really against racism, oppressing the poor, murder, etc., they also be against abortion and they’d advocate and support alternatives. (I noticed that twitter was flooded when some pro-abortion advocate asked what pro-Life people had done for children. And yes, all kinds of pro-life people got to air all the things they had done in secret.)

   You might want to backtrack a bit more and ask the question: what is the role of government? (There’s some disagreement on that.)

   I think we’ve largely gotten away from “Christians are legislating morality.” The fact is everyone is advocating for some kind of morality. Even not littering is a certain morality. Not starting forest fires as well, as Smokey Bear encourages you not to do that too. If you codify laws against drunk driving or against hate speech or against road rage or against texting and driving, you’re legislating morality. Thus it is more about what kind of morality that you legislate.

   We as Christians do believe God’s laws are given to us in our best interests. The Bible is the user’s manual.

   I know there are some non-Christians (for instance in part of the world and also in that country north of us) where they are afraid of theonomy, but this is misleading and a straw man. We’re legislating for the common good. We’re not legislating as if this country is run directly by God and we’re certainly not prosecuting disbelief.

   I think one reasonable point of view of the role of government and the law is thus: restraining evil (not only to promote commerce and the well-being of citizens). You mentioned a number of policies that don’t work — they’re not designed for either the betterment of society / promotion of commerce nor to restrain evil. Moreover, these policies appear to have a negative effect on society.

   Furthermore, as you alluded to at the end of the episode, there is a pedagogical role of laws: laws can delineate (and thus teach) what is right and what is wrong. You cited Roe v. Wade (1973) and also Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), but more positive examples would be the 13th Amendment (ending slavery and ownership of slaves) or Britain’s 1807 Slave Trade Act plus 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. To be sure, these didn’t end racism, but they were net positive.

   I have one more thing to add (as I do a lot of extracurricular reading). For a long time, the mainstream media has been aided and abeted one particular party. They have downplayed moral failings of certain individuals — as almost as there was a double-standard. If a candidate has a certain … early letter of the alphabet beside their name, espouses certain causes, then their moral failings are to be overlooked/ignored and covered up. Did we ever ask ourselves if we were electing a sociopath in 1960? Well, the guy who won is a textbook sociopath, but the media covered up everything he did. Did we talk about his multiple affairs? Yeah, all covered up too.

   Of course one person is going to look really good and one person is going to look relatively bad if the media is throwing their weight behind one party… and we should be gentle as doves and wise/cunning as serpents in knowing this.

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2. Im surprised at how much certain people, e.g. – older people – rely on the mainstream news media. They’re not unbiased, but people in my parents generation seem to find CNN etc irrestible. They can’t conceive that the news channels are biased.

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3. Hi WK,
   Off topic from episode 8, but an apologetics question. I was honored to have a Chinese Dr. (Math) barrage me with Bible and faith questions at a neighborhood party tonight. I was hoping to use evidence, but I was poorly prepared. I couldn’t explain the red shift, just that whatever it is, it shows the universe is expanding.
   But he really got me on inerrancy on Noah. He said two of every animal couldn’t possibly fit and that the amount of water to flood the earth doesn’t exist in that quantity and the hydrogeologic cycle would prevent it. I didn’t have an answer other than saying the amount of water could be a miracle, but that I believe

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4. I hit post by accident.

   I said I believe in a bigger miracle than water, I believe a dead man rose from the grave and is alive today! And that man knew the story of Noah.
   But that’s not a scientific evidence-based answer for his assertion of two specific errors. I have read apologetics for Noah, but they weren’t impressive. Do you have anything, especially for the question about the amount of water being impossible? I have read maybe they only meant a local flood in the Mideast, but that seems unsatisfactory.

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