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[MUSIC]
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This is Undaunted Life Man's podcast.
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I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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I guys today, we've got a special guest on the podcast. His name is Lucas Miles.
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So he is a pastor, author, speaker, and radio host.
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And he's also been syndicated in articles across both political and religious news outlets.
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So we're talking like Newsmax, The Blaze, Flashpoint, Box News, The Washington Times, CBN, The Christian Post.
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And there are others out there as well.
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So in addition to his newest book, which is really the center point of our conversation today,
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woke Jesus, the false messiah, destroying Christianity, Lucas is the author of the best-selling book.
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It was the number one best-selling book for a long time. The Christian left how liberal thought
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has hijacked the church. And he's got other acclaimed books. So he has another one called Good God.
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And he's done a whole lot of different things. But the interesting thing about this particular
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conversation is I heard him on John Cooper's podcast, Cooper Stuff. And I was like, dude,
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I got to talk to this guy because he has a way of cogently explaining things that are very,
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very complicated. And so in this particular podcast, we talk about how he became a pastor and all that.
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But then we really dig into the book. We do some definitional work at the beginning.
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What is woke? What is woke or progressive or conscious Christianity? What is liberation theology?
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How does that relate to black liberation theology? What about narcissism and how does that affect
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everything? But we talk about some things in terms of the goals of communism and how they
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manifest in modernity. That's really one of the hinge points of the interview and the hinge points
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of the book as well. But we talked about how proponents of woke Christianity, they will twist
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scripture around and are they doing it because they're dumb or are they doing it because they're
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nefarious? We talk about groups like the SBC bring in CRT into the fold. We also spend some time
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talking about the fact that he names names in his book. And he didn't do that in the last one,
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but in woke Jesus, he names names of progressive Christians that have done kind of woke progressive
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type things. And we name names in this podcast as well. So you have to stick around to check those
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out. But then we really get practical about what are Christians to do that go to these churches
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with some of these woke or progressive pastors or at least progressive leaning pastors? What are they
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to do? What about people that don't go to those churches like people like me that have a public
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platform? Am I to call these people out like I did Andy Stanley earlier this year? But then
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towards the end, we talked about education and how can we educate our children?
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But there's also a quote in the book that I literally told him to his face. This is about
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an hour into the interview. I told him that this quote from his book made me want to puke
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because I disagreed with it so much. So you'll have to stick around to check that out. But guys,
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I'm not going to keep them from you any longer. So without further ado, let's get into it.
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Lucas Miles, welcome to undaunted life of man's podcast. Hey, thanks for having me.
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So you've done a bunch of these interviews before, but I have a goal today, Lucas. Are you ready to
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hear it? Let's hear it. I want this to be the most memorable interview of your entire life. I have,
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I'm a small goals guy. Okay. So that's just a little one. So I'm going to do my part, but you have to
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carry some weight as well. If that's all right, I'll do my best. Okay. So let's just ease into it,
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find a nice, soft place to land. You are a professional Christian. I don't know if you knew that you
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should put that on a business card, but you are a pastor of a church, you do sermons and you write
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books and all that type of stuff. So at what point in your life did you decide, you know what,
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I'm going to take this Christian thing pro. I was 15, 15 years old. And I don't, I don't normally
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share this on most shows, but I'll give it to you. I was, I just broke up with a girlfriend.
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And was at a youth conference. And it was like my first relationship and was, you know, I had no
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idea what I was doing and was not a healthy thing by any means. And, you know, I met this youth
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conference and, you know, speakers every day, 1000 plus kids, you know, on a college campus,
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as a high school kid, you're, you're there by yourself kind of for the first time without your
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parents and everything else, you know, for this event. And it was, it was great. And this speaker,
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his name was Mike, I don't remember his last name, he's pastor in Illinois. And he does this message.
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And like the whole time, he like, I'm just edge of my seat, like just, you know, drawn in.
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He gets to the end of this message. And he says, and this is like, this is a church of Christ
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conference. Like this is like, I mean, fairly traditional denomination. We were the musical
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version of the church of Christ, not the non instrumental. Yeah, we were the wild ones. But,
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you know, and, but there wasn't a lot of talk of Holy Spirit or anything like that. This is about
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as charismatic as it got. He said, I'm going to, I'm going to say a prayer. And I'm going to ask
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that the Lord gives you somebody's name. And when you get home, that's somebody that you're
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supposed to like reach out to, you know, and so I, I mean, I just, I was in and I closed my eyes
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and this girl's name comes in my head. And it was, it was a girl that was in my class. And like,
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when I was at school, like, you know, we didn't have furries and, you know, trans stuff, we had
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goth, you know, that was, she was kind of in that vein, you know, and, and so just a lot of angst.
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And we had a class together, didn't know her super well, but she just pops in my head.
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I get home and I go through the yearbook, you know, it's summertime. And I find like her name,
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and she'd left a number. Like that's, you know, how you communicated with your classmates. And,
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and so I end up just calling her when I get back. And I said, Hey, you know, it's real awkward because
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I didn't have a lot of experience in calling girls. And I was like, Hey, this is going to seem weird,
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but like, I was at this thing and your name popped in my head. And I kind of knew she was like,
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had a reputation of being, you know, at least agnostic, if not atheist. And, and I said, like,
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I know this could sound strange, but I just feel like I was, is there anything like I can
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pray for you about? And that was just my line. And she just like starts crying. And, and I'm going
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like, what did I do? You know, like this is not starting well. And, and, and she goes,
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what day was that? And I said, it was, it was Wednesday. She goes, okay. And she just like,
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loses it again. And, and she goes, what time? And I said, I don't know, eight 30. And she just,
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it's just weeping. I finally get her to stop. And I said, you know, what, what's going on? Like,
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what's happening here? You know, again, I'm freshman in high school. And she goes, we got to call
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Wednesday night at eight 30 that my brother jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and killed himself.
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And like, I had no idea what to do. I don't know what I said. I ended up baptizing her about four
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years after that. But at that moment, I had nothing. I had no tools, nothing to access really other
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than I'll pray for you. You know, I'm sorry, you know, kind of thing. I don't even remember how
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the call ended. But I knew that I heard God say something to me. And I was hooked. And, and just that
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week, I felt a very strong call in the ministry. And, you know, I, I questioned it a couple times,
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had some other interests in high school, you know, but really by time I got to college,
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I was in, I started preaching at 17. So I'll be 44. I think this year, I always forget how old I am.
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Yeah, it's a problem. But, you know, so I've been doing this a while now, but that was, that was
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really the beginning. Well, I appreciate you going into all that detail. And yeah, I guess after you
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turn like 30, all the other, it's like your birthday matters once every two years. It's all the same.
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Yeah, we're just measuring based upon degrees of back pain. That's, that's really all that's
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happening from now on. Absolutely. Well, so there's a lot of stuff that we could have done. And in
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the preparation for this interview, just to be honest, I was like, okay, there's so many different
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rabbit trails we can go down. But I'm actually going to use your latest book, woke Jesus as the,
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I guess, center point road map. This book woke Jesus the false Messiah destroying Christianity.
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Guys, that will be in the show notes. I'm going to tell you right up front, we're going to cover a
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lot of ground here in the next 60 minutes or so. We can't possibly cover everything that is in
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this very, very thin book. Guys, this is like a lesson 200 page book. And if you take the notes
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out, it's even shorter. But we need to talk about this book again. It's, you know, woke Jesus the
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false Messiah destroying Christianity. I mean, could you go with a bolder title? You even have
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a picture of Jesus with a hammer and sickle on, on the front of the cover for those of you watching
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on YouTube and rumble. So just very, very quickly and basically give us the 30,000 foot overview.
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Why write this book and what's it about? You know, I think that the, the, the church by and large
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doesn't understand what's happening today. I think that, you know, we have a general sense of like,
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you know, woke bad Marxism bad. But because most people don't know anything about the history of
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wokeism or the history of Marxism, they are completely unqualified to be able to have these
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conversations and to dismantle these things. And then we wonder why Christians, you know,
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you know, get accused of not being understanding or not, you know, being in touch with culture or,
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you know, not being smart enough to be able to dive into these topics. And I don't think that
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you have to have, you know, look, I'm, I'm by and large, mostly self taught, not that I didn't go
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to school, but most of my training in these things is, is an immense amount of time reading. I mean,
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as you see in the book, I got 500 footnotes. I've read those books in there. That's not just me
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going through and grabbing a quote and pulling that out. You know, I'm, I really believe in kind
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of getting in the material, but this book really, you know, to kind of sum it up, I set out to write
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what I believe, you know, is the definitive guide on understanding vochism in the church.
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It's history, the modern implications and ultimately what's the roadmap for moving forward? What can
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we do about it? I think that if the church doesn't figure this out now, we are in for a rude awakening.
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And, you know, look, because, you know, I'm an optimist, God wins in the end, but that doesn't
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mean the church in America is always going to thrive. And we see these buildings over in Europe,
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you know, German Italy used to be, you know, major centers of Christian thought. Now, all we have
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left are these like beautiful, you know, shells of old churches of these, you know,
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cathedrals and buildings. And they're amazing to look at, but when you really think about what
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they represent, they represent a time when the church was once thriving, where it's now dead and
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it's empty. And the only thing difference here in America, if we don't change this, is nobody's
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going to even recognize our buildings as churches. They'll go, oh, that must have been a bowling alley
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or that must have been, you know, because, you know, we've stopped even, you know, going in that
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direction. And so we've got some work to do. I still believe we can turn this around, but we've
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got to understand it. Well, you're much more pessimistic than I am, but we'll unpack that a little bit
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as we keep going. As I was reading your book, I was reminded of Eric Metaxas' book that he released
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last year, The Letter to the American Church. And you and I have a mutual friend that is working on
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something that we can't talk about publicly yet, that I think will be a good book that kind of goes
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in that same vein as those things. The thing that's important about this is definitions are so,
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so valuable. So if you're having a debate or if you're even having a discussion, if we can't agree,
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and here's a postmodern thought, if we can't agree on what things actually mean, then we can't
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actually have a discussion because everything's vapid at that point. So just real quickly here at
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the beginning, because I really want to dig into a lot of the content of the book, I think we need
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to define some terms here. And so let's start with, you know, the first word of the title of your
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book, Woke, when you appeared on John Cooper's Cooper stuff podcast here recently, you actually
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helped me learn a very tight, brief, and cogent definition of Woke. Because I had a note on my phone
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after that gal got just dump trucked for not being able to give a definition of Woke and went viral.
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I kind of made one on my phone so I could have it, but yours was way better. And it was something
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along the lines of a higher consciousness of supposed systemic oppression. And that's a lot
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of words that sound complicated. But would you say that that is a good tight definition, a higher
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consciousness of supposed systemic oppression? Yeah. So Woke is sort of one of these, first of all,
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things for that. And you know, let me, you know, love Cooper. And you know, I want to be Eric
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Metaxas when I grow up, he's the best. And the other day, you know, see, and I've known Eric for
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a while, he's a friend, but like seeing my book and his book as the number one number two book on,
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you know, this, this Christian list on Amazon was was pretty rad. And so I won't tell you who's
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was was number one that day. But it was it was pretty awesome to see that. So, but you know, yeah,
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wokeism and woke is sort of this thing that it it's like one of those like pictures that when you
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like move which side like this, when you look at it this way, it's Elvis. And then you look at it
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this way. And it's, you know, it's Marilyn Monroe or something like that. And it's like, you know,
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like, wokeism, if you're talking about as a believer, as as somebody who understands the
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dangers of it, it's in many ways, it's a euphemism for cultural Marxism. You know, that's that's
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simplistically what it is. And and I think oftentimes it's a way of hiding this Marxist, you know,
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movement that's happening because we're calling it something that is, you know, doesn't have the
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historical baggage that the word Marxist has. And so they've been able to disguise a lot,
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you know, through this. But but you're right, I've used this definition before from a, you know,
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from the if you are somebody who adheres to woke ideology, you would probably say in a much more
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complicated way, it's a higher consciousness, a higher awareness of systemic oppression.
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I don't believe in that definition, because I think it's flawed. And so I put in there,
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it's a higher consciousness or per, you know, a perception of or hyper focus on a perceived
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systemic oppression. And so it's not that there's really an oppression that's there. In fact, and
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again, I don't, I don't give this on most podcast shows either. But you, you won me over before we
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got online here. So I have my 25th class reunion coming up. And they, I've been on the planning
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committee for like three, you know, three times, so 15th, 20th, and now 25th. And there's actually,
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because of this book, and because of a viral video that I spoke at a our local school board,
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and the video's gotten like 500,000 views on tiktok or something like that, a bunch of my classmates
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saw it. There is now a protest class reunion that they, and I had a class about 600 or 700
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people. So there's about 200 plus people attending a, this is the reunion that will not be featured
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by Lucas Miles. You don't. And, and, and they're donating all the funds to the local LGBT, you
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know, organization or whatever. And so like, you know, I'm trying to be there, they're basically
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canceling me for my own class reunion. But the reason why that's been referenced, as I understand,
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and I don't pay a lot of attention to this, but I say this because this is this perception issue,
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is that I did at the school board meeting, I talked about that the nature of locus and the
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nature of critical theory, is that it is trying to dismantle a perceived white hegemony of perceived
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white power structure through the means of all of these, you know, Marxist ideologies that come
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afterwards. And, and what people that don't understand this material, what they hear you saying is,
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that I'm, you know, that, that we, as people addressing the dangers of locus, we're trying to
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protect a white hegemony. No, we don't believe in a white hegemony. It doesn't exist. It's why I'm
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not playing basketball for the Celtics right now, because that was my dream. And they have not
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called me. And because I'm not built for that, I don't have the ability to do that. And affirmative
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action did not help me be able to play point guard for them. Because at 510, I still wasn't
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tall enough or quick enough to be able to make it happen. And so, you know, there's not a white
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power structure that exists, you know, it's systemically across the United States. This is a conspiracy
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theory of the left. But because, you know, you have to clarify these things because people hear
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this and because they've not studied it, they, you know, all they hear is you're trying to protect
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a white power structure. And obviously, you know, it's just, it's a fairy tale that the left is
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believing in in order to push these ideas. Well, Lucas, you give a lot of examples in the book.
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That's going to be one of several more commercials for this book in this podcast. You have to go
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and get it because there's a lot of work that needs to be done to understand some of these things.
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But specifically, I'm gonna leave some of these definitional things out because we got to dig
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in a little bit more. But in your book, you give a, a loose definition of woke slash progressive
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slash conscious Christianity. And so the quote here is woke Christianity also known as conscious
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Christianity is broad stroke terminology describing Christians who are intentionally conscious
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of oppression, racism, and injustice. Now, the thing that I would add to that, I'm not
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gonna add to the definition, just add it to elucidate the point is if I were to go out today,
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looking for an opportunity to be offended, I guarantee you it's like magic, Lucas, I'm like
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a magician, I would find it, I would absolutely find an opportunity. I remember when my university
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that I went to got a basically a department of racism, but they call it like cultural department
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or something like that. I was like, Oh, it's these people's job to go into every department in every
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classroom and look for oppression, racism, and injustice. And if they don't find any,
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they lose their jobs. So if I'm a betting man, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they're gonna
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find a bunch of it. Because not only are they the best at finding it, they're the best bloodhounds
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for these ideologies. But they're also the ones that can help you quote unquote, do the work of
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being an anti racist or being a non bigoted piece of garbage. And basically, if you're a white
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Christian straight cisgender male, like they are the most qualified people to get you out of all
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of those, you know, substructures or something like that. But the thing that's the most nefarious,
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which is going to be a center point of our conversation today, is it's the fact that it's
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kind of infiltrated the church. Okay, so that's my signal to what's coming up later. But we still
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have just a couple of definitional things to go. I'm not even going to have you define critical
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race theory, because it requires a discussion about critical theory, critical legal studies,
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the Frankfurt School, all of that you talk about in the book, but liberation theology,
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liberation theology, black liberation theology. Is it possible to encapsulate those ideologies
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quickly? Because I don't have a specific question, but I think we need to know that.
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Yeah, for sure. So, you know, short version is that there was there was a big movement after the
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enlightenment to basically to create or to manufacture a Jesus that was was more acceptable to the
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logic reason and scientific method, you know, value structure of the post enlightenment period,
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which meant downplaying the miraculous downplaying his divinity and out pop these kind of, you know,
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Jesus biographies that were serious of just extra biblical kind of fabrications, trying to explain
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away some of the miracles in the Bible. And really that elevated Jesus more is this great,
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you know, social reformer or or kind of humanistic prophetic voice or apostolic, you know, profit,
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but not the savior of the world. And this, this was basically was able to morph itself sort of a
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amalgamate with a lot of Marxist ideology in the late 1800s into the early 1900s. And out of this,
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what we had in the 1950s, was it finally made its way into the Catholic church in Latin America
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through a priest named Gutierrez. And Gutierrez, you know, really was the sort of the origination,
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if you will, of this idea of liberation theology, which is basically Catholicism plus Marxism.
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That then jumps to America about the same time, they kind of were developing almost simultaneously
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in like tandem tracks. And in the form of what's known as black liberation theology,
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which is again, is, you know, this, this, you know, black evangelical Christianity mixed with,
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you know, this Marxist thought, you know, a lot of W.E.D. Du Bois, you know, Malcolm X kind of,
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you know, frameworks that were added there, you know, Marxism sees the world as see it see it
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filters injustice through the lens of material possessions and labor and work and these things,
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social class, liberation theology filters the injustice through Ridge versus Poor. That's kind
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of the oppressor oppressed, you know, framework there. Black liberation theology is a little bit
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more interesting. It filters the world and injustice through the lens of white theology
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is the hygienic, hygienic power structure that's there. And James Cone was the founder of this one.
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And then, and then black experience is the thing that's being oppressed through this. And so for
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James Cone, it was all about killing the white Jesus killing white theology. And these things
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that kind of come through with that. Well, Lucas, I think that automatically leads to a discussion
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of Gnosticism, which is the last thing that I wanted you to define for us because Gnosticism
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is not just something that happened a couple of thousand years ago. It's something it's manifesting
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today. I remember a year, maybe two or three back, Vodie Bockham, you know, the the bear of
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Vodie Bockham, he he did a thing called ethnic Gnosticism. He did a presentation. And that was
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the first time people had maybe even heard the term Gnosticism. But it's basically like your
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immutable characteristics that you didn't choose that you're somehow taking pride in and ignoring
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that it's a sin. It's this lived experience type of knowledge where that gives you some sort of an
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extra ability to execute scripture or to make suggestions for public policy. But if you could
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kind of give us a basic definition of Gnosticism, but also how it's impacting modern Christianity.
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Yeah. So Gnosticism, essentially, is one of the first two heresies to face the church. You have
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the Judaizers and the Gnostics. Judaizers are referenced in the New Testament. Gnostics are
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implied or referred to, but not by name ever in the New Testament. And so, you know, we see language,
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whether it's, you know, being first John or, you know, some people would argue even in Hebrews
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or Galatians that that kind of references these things a little bit. But, you know, for the most
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part, this is something that was kind of post New Testament that really, you know, rose up to the,
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to the, to the level to where it was really jeopardizing orthodoxy within the church at a time.
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There was an early thinker, Irenaeus, who was in the second century that wrote a book called
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Against Heresies. That's kind of the definitive, you know, most trusted early work on Gnosticism.
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A lot of the early Gnostic writings did not survive, but what we have is a lot of the early
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rebuttals to Gnosticism that were able to kind of, you know, retrofit, you know, what Gnostics
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believe or kind of reverse engineer, what they believe from that. It was a mixture of Judaism,
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Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. So basically, from the beginning, they were, they were, you know,
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basically alchemist. They were, they amalgamated these different, you know, beliefs together.
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There, there was a sense that there wasn't a unified orthodox, you know, Christianity
22:32
has what we call orthodoxy, right teaching, because, you know, we, we had the councils and
22:37
creeds to fight these things out and really come up with definitions about what is Christian and
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what is not based upon the singular teaching of scripture. Gnostics obviously did not have that.
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It was much more sporadic. So there was a lot of different camps. In Augustine's day,
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he battled the manatees, which were a form of Gnosticism, but at its base level, there was a
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belief essentially that the physical was rejected. It was evil. It was, it was oppressive. And so there
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was a belief that the Creator God Yahweh, when he created man, that he took pre-existent spirits
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and he placed them in a physical body. And as a result, when he did that, it created us into,
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we basically were placed in systemic oppression by human flesh because we were once free in the
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spirit and now we're subjected to flesh and limitations. And so all of life then is about
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trying to find liberation. And this is a little bit of anachronistic, you know, language I'm
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applying back here, but essentially what we're seeing is that, that the goal of Gnosticism was
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to get a higher knowledge, a raised consciousness, very similar to what we see in modern wokeism,
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of how do we get liberated. Now liberation for them was not about, you know, it wasn't this Marxist
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concept yet, you know, we could, we would argue Marx and Hegel were Gnostics, not that Gnostics
23:55
were Marxists, you know, it doesn't go that direction. And so, but they were, the goal was that Jesus
24:01
came not, he was not God, he was either a spirit according to some who appeared in human flesh,
24:07
he was an apparition, he was a man that sort of reached a divine state through, you know, revelation
24:13
and secret knowledge. But at any rate, he came that if we, you know, find this kind of secret
24:18
knowledge that he had, then we find freedom from this Creator God. And so Gnosticism kind of lays
24:24
the groundwork for this idea of systemic oppression, for this idea of oppressor versus oppressed,
24:29
you know, in a very early formation. And, you know, when you read Hegel's writings, he was
24:34
obsessed with this sort of language. He viewed very similar things about God and the Spirit,
24:39
it's very complex, there's multiple, you know, spirits, there's not just, you know, there's not a
24:43
Trinity, this is not Christianity, but it hijacks some of the terminology in order to kind of create
24:49
its own faith. But they had, you know, multiple heavens, multiple deities and, you know,
24:53
you know, demiurges and all these sort of things that were part of this.
24:57
One, the thing is, is it's a philosophy that can't be put on a note card. Whereas, you know,
25:02
Christianity is like we're all depraved sinners in need of a Savior to be in the presence of a
25:06
holy God. And that's why God sent his own son to become the propitiation for our sins like that.
25:11
That's kind of like the in the nutshell version. It's not really an in the nutshell version for
25:15
Gnosticism. But it's something you said I keyed in on is secret knowledge, because people that are
25:21
proponents of these worldviews, it's so arrogant and so patriarchal, they're just like, Oh, I understand.
25:28
Let me hold your hand as I bring you through this. And you know, at the end of this rainbow,
25:32
I'm still going to think you're a racist, but let's do the work along the way to get rid of this
25:37
racism that is befalling you. But there's a hinge point of your book that I don't know that you
25:41
would call it that. But for me, it certainly was because people don't understand communism.
25:46
Don't worry. I'm not going to make you define communism. They don't understand communism.
25:49
And they don't understand the influence of communism, because everyone, even though we live in 2023,
25:55
we still have this ideal that the only way America can be toppled is from the Atlantic Ocean or from
26:01
the Pacific Ocean in an invasion of some kind. But you detail something that was published
26:07
over 50 years ago, I mean, almost 70 years ago, by W. And I think it's Cleon Skausen or Skusen.
26:13
But I actually just want to read this quick section here, because whenever I read it, I
26:17
literally went back and I'm not a rereader. If I don't understand what happened on that page,
26:21
that's in my past, I got to put my behind in my past, I got to keep going. But I went back like
26:25
surely not because I've heard stuff like this before, but you laid out explicitly. So let's go here.
26:30
First published in 1958, guys, 1958. That was a long time ago. W Cleon Skusen, the in W Cleon
26:40
Skusen's the naked communist expertly exposes the patient strategies of communism to remake
26:46
the Western world. Most notably, the book contains a detailed list of the 45 goals of communism.
26:52
The same list gathered by US intelligence was presented to Congress in 1963 by then Florida
26:57
representative Albert S. Herlong Jr. Democrat. It offers a chilling understanding of just how
27:03
insidious and far-sighted the communist agenda in America is. While the list has been republished
27:08
in countless forms throughout the years, two of the goals that contains are critical to
27:12
understanding what's happening in Christian institutions. Rule number 17, get control of the
27:18
schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda.
27:23
Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
27:29
Does that sound familiar? Then we have rule 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed
27:34
religion with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual
27:39
maturity, which does not need a religious crutch. So 45 goals of communism. Those are the two
27:48
that sound like they were written in February of this year, not in 1958. So I guess the question,
27:54
Lucas, is the communists are certainly winning, but is the battle over at this point? Because
28:00
they've captured the schools. The schools have been captured at this point. And the churches,
28:04
I mean, they've got Satan's hands on their throat right now and they don't even realize it.
28:08
Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think it's important too to recognize here that, you know,
28:13
I think the nature of communism is kind of inspiring this, this originally, this bottom down revolution,
28:21
you know, kind of that this, this working class would rise up against the, you know,
28:26
this, this bourgeoisie class and, and, you know, kind of have this overthrow. And the nature of
28:31
communism in Marxist ideology is that, that you can't fix a system because these perceive things,
28:38
systemic racism, you know, injustice is sort of baked into the framework of the, the foundations
28:46
of a particular nation or system or something like that. You can't go in there and remove it. It's
28:51
like, you know, it's like putting ink inside of like, you know, bread dough, like you can't get it
28:56
out of there anymore in their mindset. So you just have to throw everything away or burn it and start
29:01
over. And so there's no desire to improve anything. And so I think that, you know, I mean, to some
29:05
degree, obviously we have major players, we could talk Russia, we could talk communist China and
29:09
others, we could talk about some of the, you know, you know, kind of leftist billionaire, you know,
29:13
Marxist, you know, thinkers in the world. But, but I think that, you know, it's, it's much more,
29:18
you know, almost like free form than that. And I think that the goal is just if we can inspire
29:26
people to basically tear down their own structure, then this great utopia is going to rise out from
29:31
this. And you're right, they're, they're been winning in a lot of areas. I am an optimist, despite,
29:36
you know, some of the things I said at the start here, like, I do believe that God wins in the end,
29:41
the church, you know, is, has its best days ahead of it. The death of the martyrs, the seat of the
29:46
church, and the church thrives in persecution. And we're starting to see the church, I think,
29:51
kick it into high gear, because they're feeling, you know, we're feeling this, this, you know, kind
29:56
of the, the wins change. And I think that we're realizing like, hey, we got to get serious here.
30:01
And I think more and more people are getting on board with that. But there are many institutions
30:05
that have fallen. And we have a lot of work to do to rebuild these things and kind of capture them
30:10
back. You know, we've seen some wins just yesterday having affirmative action, you know,
30:15
struck down at the, you know, collegiate level, having, you know, Roe v. Wade overturned last
30:19
summer. I mean, there's been, there's been several big wins that have happened. And thankfully,
30:24
I mean, they're really, you know, besides strong families, strong church, and the Supreme Court,
30:29
like there's very few things that are kind of holding this place still together. So there's,
30:33
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career to new heights. LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Well, I think there's some
31:34
encouragement in that. I'm reminded of a book by Matt Chandler that he wrote years ago called
31:38
Take Heart. And it was talking about how, you know, when the church was under the most amount of
31:41
oppression, it had its most growth. And part of it is because these people were having to pray the
31:46
prayer, you know, give us this day our daily bread. Or, you know, and these are people that are having
31:50
to hide, you know, a copy of, you know, the gospel of John, like under the floorboards of their house,
31:56
lest they be found out and then get executed. That's where the church is growing. It's not
32:00
growing in the West because we've been so comfortable with Christianity. Well, there's a lot of reasons
32:04
for that. I don't want to encapsulate it. And so so small of a word or a phrase there. But
32:08
some of the proponents, Lucas of Woke Christianity, and I would say most of the proponents, because
32:13
you kind of have to in order to be a proponent of Woke Christianity, they love to twist scripture
32:17
to fit their narrative. Now, I think Occam's razor might apply here to where it's like the least
32:24
common denominator, like the the least nefarious sounding thing is probably what's what's happening
32:30
here. It's probably people not actually reading their Bibles. It's probably people doing univariate
32:36
analysis on scripture. You know, there's this, you know, a concept of attribute to ignorance,
32:41
as opposed to attribute to malice until proven otherwise. But talk to me a little bit about how
32:46
a lot of people that have your job, they walk up to their pulpits in front of their sheep that
32:50
they're going to have to give an account to God someday for how they shepherded. And they say things
32:54
that are literally untrue about scripture. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, I used to think that
33:01
basically what was happening was there was just poor interpretation of the word. And what I've
33:07
come to kind of believe now and see more and more is that I think that there's a lot more sincerity
33:13
and a lot more thought put into what's said than just, you know, mistakes or ignorance or poor
33:20
interpretation. And I think the part of this is really, you know, one of the defining things for
33:25
Woke Christianity or the Christian laughter, conscious Christianity, whatever we want to call it,
33:29
progressive church, is that there has been a detachment from the inerrancy of the word of God.
33:35
And so, you know, if I go kind of if I geek out a little bit in theology here for a second, Carl
33:40
Bart, you know, in the, you know, after after kind of escaping, you know, you know, the war in Europe
33:47
and everything that was happening, he develops, you know, kind of a whole, you know, systematic
33:51
theology. I mean, just his stuff is, you know, massive and robust and some of the hardest theological
33:57
reading you could do in many ways. And but one of the concepts that he has that I think was, was
34:04
done with good intention, was that he separates the the person of Jesus as, you know, Jesus,
34:11
Lord, Savior, you know, God's word revelation, Jesus, from the the written word that we refer to
34:20
as the word of God. And so we have kind of these two things, you know, you call the word of God,
34:24
the Bible, and you call the word of God, Jesus is the word of God, you know, and so, and he kind of,
34:29
it was the first one really to sort of peel those two things apart in, in kind of Christian history.
34:35
And, and everything, I think before this, there was just a lot of acceptance of like,
34:40
these things are almost synonymous that Jesus is the embodiment of the word and that the word is
34:45
the embodiment of Christ when it's spoken and these things. So Bart pulls them apart for the purpose,
34:51
not of dismantling or diminishing the word, but for the purpose, I think to, in defense of him,
34:58
to elevate Christ. But when he did so, it created an opportunity for, I think, critical theologians
35:06
to sort of drive a wedge in there and start spreading that even further. And so for Bart,
35:11
it was just this little bitty gap between the word and Christ. But, but after people like James
35:17
Cohn and modern thinkers have had their way with that, they've kind of, you know, got in there and
35:21
sort of pushed these walls apart. And, and it's to the point to where the word itself doesn't, it
35:28
doesn't have to mean anything. We don't have to hold to scripture in verse. It's, it's got,
35:33
it's got, it's the story of the word. It's the high level of the word that matters.
35:36
And as long as we hold the concept of Jesus. Right. Well, if I could, if I can hop in here
35:40
real quick, because early in the book, there were a couple of things that I was like, that sounds
35:44
funny. But you talk about the problems created when people don't talk about the Bible in English,
35:50
and they don't take it literally. Okay. So you say that those are indications of progressive
35:55
Christianity, which I was with you with you with you. And then I was like, wait a minute, is this a
35:59
witch hunt? Because you specifically talk about how people don't take every word literally. Well,
36:04
Jesus in the New Testament is described as a vine and as a door. And I don't think people were
36:09
knocking on them and they weren't pruning them. And then there's also a people that don't believe
36:13
the earth was created in seven literal days as we experience days today, which it's, it's something
36:21
people are dying for me to talk about on the show. But I'm like, it's the least interesting topic in
36:25
the world to me, whether it was like a day was a million years back in the day, or if it was like
36:29
24 hours. And then you also mentioned William Lane Craig and his argument for Genesis being
36:34
mytho history. I'm of the persuasion. And I disagree with William Lane Craig plenty on other things.
36:40
I think Genesis could categorically be mytho history as he defines it. And the Bible can still be
36:46
an errant because the Bible is full of different styles of writing. And not all of it is meant to
36:51
be taken literally. Am I making sense? Yeah, but here's the thing on this, Kyle, I think it's
36:55
important to understand. The Bible is, I would say in the vast majority of cases, if I could
37:01
probably make an argument for almost every case, but I'll give it, I'll give, you know, the benefit
37:05
of the doubt here, the vast majority of cases, it tells you in some implication or something
37:13
through how it's written stylistically where it's going. And so we're not, you know, we're not
37:18
literalists in the sense that it says, you know, Jesus is a door, Jesus is a vine that we believe
37:23
that he's a vine or a door that that's foolish. You know, nobody, nobody, nobody really holds to
37:27
that framework. You know, that's that's the argument that we hear against it. What we are is we're
37:31
literalists in context. We're literalists. So if it's parabolic language, then I receive it as a
37:38
parable. Jesus says, let me tell you're parable. I don't have to believe that there was really a
37:42
rich man and, you know, he had a, you know, a servant in these things. Like I can, I can receive it as a
37:47
story. I can pull out the symbolism and the meaning. When it comes to, you know, we have genealogies,
37:54
we have this person be got this person, this person be got this person, you know, in order to go to
37:58
Genesis and say, this is mytho history, you have to, you also have to go to the first chapter of
38:03
Matthew and say, this is mytho history, because it's referencing people that are in Genesis that
38:07
were, you know, believed as historical figures. We have Jesus referring to people as historical
38:12
figures. And so I think that, I think, you know, William Lane Craig, I, there's plenty of stuff I
38:16
agree with him on, plenty of stuff I disagree with him on. I think that he, you know, kind of, you know,
38:21
was over skis a little bit in this mytho history thing. And he was doing the same thing that was
38:27
happening after the enlightenment. I think he was, you know, weather conscious, not of it or not.
38:31
He was trying to stay relevant by, by, you know, I think, you know, I mean, almost seemed of getting
38:38
tired of having to defend a more literal view of the first three chapters of Genesis. And he went
38:44
the easy way out, you know, to, to call it mytho history. If we're questioning the first couple
38:50
chapters of Genesis, where do we go from there? You know, and so if doubt is creeping in, if critical
38:56
theology is creeping in from the beginning, it's, it's very easy to start allowing that to creep in
39:01
later on. And, and so, you know, we, we see things about scripture. It tells us what it's a story.
39:07
It tells us when it's history. And I think that we receive it as, as it is recording it as such.
39:13
Well, I think this gets into a discussion that I had recently. So we have a, a part of the show
39:17
called the forging table. So it's me and three other laymen going through books of the Bible,
39:22
like one chapter, one hour at a time. And so we'll say things wrong and we'll exegy
39:27
things improperly because we're basically dummies. So okay. And so like, we were doing our best here.
39:32
But this came up during our last recording, which your interview will come out before that
39:36
episode comes out. So people will kind of get a sense of what we were talking about. But we are
39:41
quick Christians, conservatives, whatever, we are quick to point out circular argumentation.
39:46
You know, when Matt Walsh asks someone, you know, what is a woman? And they're like, someone who
39:51
identifies as a woman. And he's like, yeah, what is woman? What is that? And they just keep going
39:55
around in a circle. We're quick to point those things out and we rightfully point those things
39:59
out. But when it comes to the Bible, this is me playing devil's advocate as a Christian,
40:03
as a believer in the Bible, as the inerrant word of God. People were like, when they get asked by,
40:08
you know, a skeptic, Hey, why do you believe in the Bible? And it's because, oh, and they'll say,
40:13
Oh, it's because it's God breathed. Well, how do you know it's God breathed? Because it's in the
40:16
Bible. It's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. So because par said that in 2 Timothy that, you know,
40:22
every scripture is God breathed. We just accept that. And it's not intellectually satisfying,
40:29
which it doesn't have to be, but it's just not. It's not philosophically consistent. It's not
40:33
intellectually honest, I guess you could even say, because you're letting the Bible read the Bible.
40:37
I've heard a lot of preachers say that. Let the Bible, you know, interpret the Bible. It's like,
40:40
you see where culture is kind of gets icky. I would argue that that is the perspective
40:47
of, of, and I get that sentiment. I understand that feeling. But I think that when you start
40:54
seeing how the Bible, what, you know, kind of came to be the canon came together. Yes, like that,
41:02
that, that falls off because we don't, we don't say the Bible's God breathed because the Bible says
41:08
it's God breathed. We say that the those who walked with Jesus accepted the fact that the Bible was
41:15
God breathed because they were trained by Christ himself. And they, they, they were, they had this
41:21
teaching from the beginning. And that was demonstrated for, you know, you know, with basically historic
41:28
evidence being passed down and then came to be canonized, not because people decided this should
41:33
be in the, in the canon, but because the canon, the canon canonized itself. Everybody has this idea
41:39
that, you know, in the, the council of Nicaea that they decided the canon, that's not what they did.
41:43
The canon was, it was canonized by itself. And what I mean by that is that it was, they simply
41:49
acknowledged what already existed and was already universal among churches and had historic
41:54
witness. And so, you know, the fact that we hold to scripture as the word of God is not because a
41:59
bunch of people, you know, 300 years after Christ said, this is the word of God. It's because, it's
42:04
because, you know, Irenaeus who was discipled directly by these guys goes, this is the word of God and
42:10
I learned it from them, you know, climate and Ignatius and these different people that we have,
42:14
you know, that we have for lack of better term sort of apostolic witness, you know, for the
42:19
foundation and formation of these things. The more you read that, the more you see it, you know,
42:23
most of my experience is in patristic history. You know, there's, there's very few kind of first 500
42:28
year documents that of early Christianity that have not read personally and, and studied. And so,
42:34
like, you know, when you see those things, the canon becomes, it makes it's so much more reassuring
42:40
because you're realizing like this was not just something that was made up, you know, by people
42:43
or accepted loosely. Like this was literally passed down and we are recipients of something that was,
42:51
that was universally accepted by people who were discipled directly by the apostles themselves.
42:56
When I think that's helpful because a lot of people in modernity, Lucas, they're being
43:00
discipled by Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code or the Joe Rogan experience and they're just like,
43:05
they just kind of wave their hand. Now, I give Dan Brown a pass because he wrote a fiction novel
43:09
that people took as literal. It's like you morons. Like he didn't do that on like, and he sold a
43:14
bajillion copies. I think he had a couple interviews that didn't help him. But look, I,
43:18
I've enjoyed the Tom Hanks movies. I've read at least one Dan Brown book. It's, it's, you know,
43:22
it's fun adventure kind of reading as long as you recognize that it's not, you know, it's not
43:26
canon, right? Yeah, it's not, it's not canon and it's not history either. Like there,
43:30
there are historical elements that are brought in to make the story kind of move along. But then
43:34
you have someone like Joe Rogan who just kind of waves his hand over the council of Nicaea. And
43:37
then he says, oh, it's been translated so many times. And he gives no recognition of the amount
43:42
I would love. I'm waiting for, I'm waiting for Rogan to call me and say, let's talk about this.
43:47
And look, there's probably better people to talk about translation than me. Certainly,
43:50
they have a lot more academic credentials on that. But, but you know, even in a basic
43:54
understanding, you know, this idea that like, oh, scripture was copied from a copy of a copy of a
43:58
copy, like first of all, the Dead Sea Scrolls proved that over the Old Testament, that that is not the
44:02
case. You know, we find something in 1948 that's verifying stuff that's, you know, literally thousands
44:06
of years old. And then, you know, we have, I mean, the amount of fragments that we have,
44:12
if people have never been, I'll give a plug for these guys. The Green family did a fabulous job
44:16
with the Museum of the Bible and DC incredible experience, you know, and just, I mean, that was
44:20
the place that I think can really, if you're not going to do the work of like grabbing books and
44:24
diving into this, it's a great fast track to go, oh, wow, we have a lot more that this is based on than
44:31
just a copy of a copy of a copy, you know, that's here. Yeah, so good Oklahoma shout out there,
44:35
the Green family, the founders and people that run Hobby Lobby. But yeah, I've heard great things
44:40
about that. I haven't been able to get over there yet. I was in DC for like 18 hours, and I wasn't
44:44
able to make it over there. I was so bored in the Smithsonian after going to the Bible Museum.
44:49
Okay, I was like, what I was like, this, this kind of sucks. Like, this is nothing compared to what I
44:53
was, it was, I felt like I was at a Bass Pro shop. It was just a bunch of stuff like, like fake
44:58
animals compared to like the Bible Museum was interactive. I mean, just exciting was just really
45:04
amazing. Well, there's your commercial. And it's like, hey, the Smithsonian has Don Draper suit,
45:07
and the Museum of the Bible has the reason why we can believe that, you know, that's the word of
45:11
God. Now, I do want to talk about and transition into particular groups or particular denominations
45:17
that are looking at Scripture. And then they want to sprinkle some stuff over the top of it, right?
45:23
So the one that comes to mind is the SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is making headlines
45:28
on an annualized basis during the summer now during their conventions. But they approved
45:33
critical race theory CRT to be used as, and they worded it in this mealy mouth nonsense way as,
45:40
you know, like a lens through which to view the plight of people of color in the US so that we can
45:44
more easily disciple to them and minister to them and blah, blah, blah. So you actually talk
45:49
about this in the book, okay, but I want to ask you as a way to tee you up. Are there any redeeming
45:54
qualities or aspects of CRT that churches and ministries can use in order to minister better?
46:00
Not at all. Give us the reason why. Let's go.
46:04
So first off, critical race theory was it was it was built upon a foundation of Marxism. In fact,
46:12
James Lindsey, I think points us out in his book, Race Marxism. He has, you know, a letter or writing
46:17
from Richard Delgado, who one of the early founders who's part of kind of the original group. Derek
46:22
Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw kind of coined the term, but Delgado was with them. I think they were up
46:26
in Madison, Wisconsin, that they all got together. And Delgado refers to the group of people getting
46:31
together to develop critical race theory. And it's kind of this like little think tank that they
46:35
assembled and literally says, you know, it was, I think it's so the direct quote is this was a strange
46:40
place to find a bunch of Marxists. And so like the literally the foundational members of the creation
46:49
of critical race theory were Marxists. And you'll have people today that go, Oh, critical race
46:54
theory isn't Marxism. According to critical race theorists, they refer to it as Texas take them
46:59
at their word, guys. Yeah, like, I'm not in, you know, just so people know, like, I've not read a lot of
47:05
like books like mine that are trying to dismantle critical race theory. Most of my reading has been
47:14
reading critical race theorists writings. And and kind of looking at at, you know, what they say
47:20
about it and then applying a biblical lens to it. And so like, this isn't just going, Oh, this is
47:25
just a, you know, evangelical talking point or something. No, when you read their writings,
47:29
you see that it's Marxist. I was, you know, let me back up a little bit. So, you know, I think it
47:35
additionally is that critical race theory as a Christian, it robs the believer of the opportunity
47:40
to suffer for Christ. I think this is one of the greatest arguments against it. If my suffering in
47:46
this world is because of my skin color, my socioeconomic status, you know, we could throw in critical
47:50
queer theory, my sexuality, my gender, my sexual persuasion, country of origin, you know, any of
47:59
these things, if my suffering and the injustice that I experienced in this world is because of those
48:03
things, then when can I suffer for Christ? And the answer is you can't because there's always this
48:10
systemic system that you have to deal with. And look, I believe in systemic, you know, oppression.
48:16
It's it's called the law of sin and death. And anybody who doesn't put faith in Christ is still
48:22
under that. And they are still experiencing systemic oppression. When you receive Christ,
48:27
you actually become free of that law of sin and death. And you can experience liberation. Jesus
48:33
is the liberation that every Marxist is looking for. But instead of relying on him for to be the
48:38
liberation, they're pulling back in themselves because they believe as the definition of Marxism
48:43
is its man making the world in his own image. It's about man's labor, about man's work, about
48:48
the craftsmanship of man's hands. And and by nature, Marxist ideology cannot receive Christ
48:55
because it is opposed to the idea of receiving something by grace through faith. It's all about
49:00
works. It's a legalistic framework from the start. So this is this is what critical race theory is
49:05
built upon. It divides people based upon skin color. It also has unbalanced scales. You know,
49:11
Bible speaks explicitly about this idea that that that the Lord despises and hates actually
49:16
unbalanced scales weighing one person, you know, in one way and weighing another person another way.
49:21
It has this idea of, you know, basically passing down guilt. The Bible teaches that, you know,
49:28
it says that each man should live and die according to his sin that the sin of the father shall be
49:33
upon the father, the son shall be upon the son that the son that, you know, should not be, you know,
49:38
held in contempt for the sin of his father or the father and judgment for the sin of his son,
49:43
you know, but but critical race theory chases down that, you know, we have to start looking at
49:47
your ancestral line to see, you know, what's there and you owe me some reparations. I mean,
49:51
look, I just found out I'm 55% Irish from a DNA test that I had a sponsor do recently from Israel.
49:58
And, and, you know, the Irish were some of the most enslaved people, you know, in, in the world,
50:04
I would guess from the color of your beard, you've got a little bit in you as well, you know, and,
50:08
and so like I'm waiting for my reparations. Like my, my ancestors were most likely enslaved.
50:13
And we just found out that Obama comes from, you know, slave owners, you know, he's got that,
50:17
he's only present Trump that didn't descend from slave owners of what do you recent studies say.
50:21
So I think Obama owes me some money. That's what I'm saying here.
50:24
Well, the thing is, is anytime you put a word before Christian, that word becomes a qualifier
50:29
for Christian and usurps the word Christian. So yes, woke Christian, gay Christian, LGBTQ plus
50:36
blah, blah, blah, Christian. And the reality is, is yes, I am Irish. Fantastic guess. But I'm also
50:42
Choctaw Indian. Well, guess what? The Indians, the Choctaw Indians weren't just walking around,
50:48
smoking their peace pipe and, you know, loaning some of their bison meat to their tribes on the
50:52
other side of the hill. If they weren't raping, pillaging and enslaving, they were being raped,
50:56
pillaging enslaved. And yes, the Irish, when they came over here because of the potato famine,
51:00
which is where my ancestors came from, they were treated as subhuman when they got here to,
51:06
to different parts of New England and New York. And do I need to go back and petition the government
51:11
of the United Kingdom for reparations for how they treated my ancestors? No, why? Because I
51:15
wasn't treated that way. But we're on the same page there. So I don't want to belabor the point.
51:19
But there's something unique about your book and about your writing that some people don't like to
51:25
do. A lot of Christians do not like to do this. And it's that you name names. And so people that,
51:31
you know, for some reason or another, or at some time or another have done things that would be
51:36
in kind of the woke slash progressive Christianity category. And you name them. So you name Stephen
51:41
Furtick and Carl Lance and my old pastor of 12 years, Craig Rochelle, you name Russell Moore,
51:46
you name JD Greer, you name Eric Mason, you name David Platt, you just on and on and on,
51:50
you name people, some that are professional pastors, some that some that aren't. But I guess
51:55
whenever I call out pastors on my show, I do get some feedback like, Hey, man,
51:59
that doesn't sound very Christian like, like, shouldn't you have tried to talk to them in private
52:05
and privately rebuke them? And don't you need to develop a relationship with these people before
52:10
you have their name and, you know, their name in your mouth? And I guess it's like, have you all
52:15
read 1 Timothy where Paul traveled to, to rebuke Peter to his face publicly because he was being
52:21
racist and, you know, preferentially treating the Judaizers. And I guess modern Christians,
52:27
in addition to just being cowards that don't ever want any conflict at all, they believe the 11th
52:31
commandment is being nice, no matter what to everybody, no matter what. But I guess, why did you
52:36
decide to name names? Why did you decide to be on their radar as being critical of some of the
52:42
nonsense crap that they pulled? Yeah, yeah, you know, this honestly, this was something,
52:46
in my last book, The Christian Left, I wrote the whole book. And I turn it into my publisher,
52:52
I turn it in, I give it to a couple very trusted, wise friends in the, in, you know, have long
52:57
standing careers in Christian media. And, you know, it was only my, you know, my Christian Left,
53:03
my previous book was was kind of only the, it's like the third thing that I'd gotten kind of on a
53:07
national level. And I wanted to get it right, you know, I'm still a fairly young guy, although,
53:13
you know, some days my back tells me otherwise, right? But like, I want to do this right, I want
53:18
to do it honorable. I'm not, this is not, you know, you look at the title of the book, Woke
53:23
Jesus, and it's really easy to assume that, you know, it's some sort of, you know, just, you know,
53:27
hit piece or that it's some far right activist or something like that. I really, you know, think
53:33
that what people are going to find is an attempt to be first and foremost true to scripture and,
53:38
and true to my faith and, and, you know, to the Lord. And so like this idea, the names, when I've
53:43
turned in this last book, the Christian Left, I had three people come back to me that I gave it to
53:47
and every single one of them said the same things. They said, Lucas, this is like the world needs
53:51
this like you're, you were built for this, this has to get out. It's, it's going to be super well
53:56
received, but you're missing a chapter. I had literally three people tell me that. And I was like,
54:01
what is it? You know, and they're like, we need to know who. And I'm like, well, I don't want to
54:06
do that. You know, like, I don't want to be that guy. I don't, you know, can't we just talk about
54:09
this conceptually? And the problem is, I mean, here's the thing, like, I was going around and,
54:14
and like talking about progressive Christianity. And I had names in mind when I was talking about
54:21
it, but somebody would go, Oh, you mean, you know, this, this charismatic pastor or this guy over here
54:28
or this female writer over here. And I'm like, no, no, like, they might, I might disagree with them
54:34
on some secondary doctrines. But those people are not introducing Marxism into the church. Like,
54:39
you're hating on them because you don't like certain things about them, or you don't like how
54:43
big their houses or something like that. But like, that's not the biggest concern right now for the
54:47
body of Christ. It's these other, in fact, the subversive nature of progressive Christianity is
54:53
why I think you have to name names, because a lot of times we don't think that these people are there.
54:58
We don't think that they're there in that space. The one of the things that freed me was going back
55:02
through the epistles and reading the Apostle Paul and seeing how many names he actually references.
55:08
You know, he makes statements like look out for Alexander the metal worker, you know, he's caused
55:12
great harm. And just so people know, there are some of these names that I reached out to for
55:17
comment. There are some of these names that I offered to send the manuscript to ahead of time,
55:21
or at least sections of the manuscript to ahead of time. So they had a chance to see it in advance.
55:25
Not all of them, you know, some of them I just have zero contact with. Their statements were
55:29
public enough. Other people had addressed this before. I didn't, I didn't feel a personal
55:34
responsibility to try to pursue a relationship. And like, look, I'm a pastor, you know, somebody
55:38
just walks in my door that they don't know, or that I don't know and goes, Hey, let me tell you
55:42
about all these things that you're doing wrong. You know, that's probably they're probably not
55:46
going to get a great audience, you know, from me, if at all, you know, it's going to come from
55:50
trusted people. And so now I will say this, I have friends in ministry, some of which are
55:55
national names that I think are, are drifted in this that they're affected by this. I have
56:02
pastors at a local level here. They're flirting. They're flirting Lucas. That's a great word for
56:07
it. They're flirting with this. But, you know, and people go, why didn't you call out this person?
56:11
And sometimes my answer on why I didn't call them out publicly is because I have a relationship with
56:16
them. And I'm not doing that because I'm afraid of calling them out. I'm doing that because God
56:21
has me place strategically with some people right now where I am helping them personally walk through
56:26
this in a way that I believe is going to be the most beneficial that they're going to be able to
56:30
recover. My hope is on the other side of this successfully. And so there are certain names that
56:35
I don't call out because I believe that doing so publicly because when I'm, and I've said these
56:40
things privately to them, you know, but, but, and I could have people criticizing go, why didn't you
56:44
say this person? Or why did I see a picture of you with this person? And it's because God's got me
56:48
placed there. And I'm not going to ruin that moment, you know, just because somebody else wants me to,
56:52
you know, kind of, you know, go crazy naming names. We have to name enough people know what
56:56
you're talking about. I think some of these conversations can be private conversations with
57:00
the individual. Some can be private conversations with other people. You and I could talk offline
57:04
about a name about where they're at. But there's some names that I think are egregious enough
57:09
or have enough influence or they're spouting off, you know, significant material that it's
57:14
important that we go, no, this is, I'm not questioning their salvation, but they're off base here. And,
57:21
and I'm going to invite them to kind of return back to orthodoxy. Well, Lucas earlier this year,
57:25
I recorded a podcast where I gave my argument. I didn't just state it. You know, like, you know,
57:30
Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. I said that Andy Stanley was a heretic. And I spent an hour
57:35
laying out my argument for it. You can agree or disagree. But the feedback that I wasn't going to
57:39
accept was you shouldn't call him out because you don't know him personally. And I was like,
57:43
that's funny. Because I remember you calling out a national presidential candidate you didn't like,
57:49
you're either pro or anti Trump pro or anti Obama. And so it's like, okay, so publicly calling out a
57:54
national figure in politics is okay. But if they're a pastor, they're all of a sudden off limits.
58:00
And I guess the thing is, is for a lot of people, like when I called out Andy Stanley,
58:03
some of the feedback was, how do you think his church could get so big? If he was a heretic,
58:08
if he was doing these things, I was like, well, if you read the narrative of scripture, we see this
58:12
in Second Timothy, these these ministries that tickle people's ears, they will continue to grow
58:17
as we are in the last days and as we get closer to the end times. So if you look at the size of a
58:23
church's parking lot, and you know, the advancements of their sound system as indications of their
58:28
biblical orthodoxy or they're holding to to great theology, that's a really, really bad idea.
58:34
But as all this kind of comes together, Christians are confused about what to do because, you know,
58:40
I'm a public figure with a, you know, somewhat sizable public profile, you're the same, like,
58:46
you know, you've written stuff for national news, you have best-selling books, like all these things.
58:50
But for normal Christians out there, people that are sitting at North Point under Steven
58:55
Furtick, or they're sitting at live church under Craig Rochelle, or they're sitting at whatever
58:58
Eric Mason churches or elevation churches, Steven Furtick, if they're sitting in these churches,
59:03
and they don't know what to do, because leaving is one option. But you get into this a little bit,
59:08
and I'm setting you up kind of short shrift here, because we're running short on time. But towards
59:11
the end of your book, you talk about the theological concept of, you know, Chris Tuss Victor and
59:16
Missio Day and all these things that kind of give, you know, normal people out there, a little bit
59:21
of a roadmap for how to attack these things. But tangibly, logistically, how do we push back,
59:27
especially if it's not our church, because Andy Stanley is not going to have to give an account
59:31
for how you shepherded me, because I listened to his podcast for seven or eight years, you know what
59:35
I mean? Sure. Yeah, I mean, so there's a couple questions here, but let me answer the practical
59:40
side of this first. So I think to start with to the everyday Christian out there attending church,
59:47
you have to know where your church stands. That is your responsibility. It might be the pastor's
59:51
responsibility to shepherd you well and to lead well, and we could talk about whether, you know,
59:55
how they're held accountable by God for that. But it's your, you don't get a pass. You don't get to,
1:00:01
you know, I don't think that, you know, we go to heaven and the Lord says, what were you doing in
1:00:05
that place for all this time? Well, I was just trusting my pastor, you know, he has all the
1:00:09
responsibilities on him. No, you have a job to shepherd your family. You know, that's the, that's the
1:00:14
kind of sphere sovereignty that each person has as an adult to shepherd their family. If you don't
1:00:18
have a family, your job is to shepherd your own heart, you know, in that way. And so, I think that
1:00:23
you have to make sure no worry church stands. And so some of the things that I tell people, you know,
1:00:26
did your church cheer when Roe V. Wade was overturned? Is your church talking about these issues? Is it
1:00:32
addressed the transgender pride stuff? Did they make people repent for their skin color, you know,
1:00:38
during the whole George Floyd thing? Like, these are all like, you need to know the answers to
1:00:42
these questions and see which side of the fence your church falls on to know if you should stay
1:00:47
there or not. If you've, if you just started attending a church and your first week there,
1:00:51
your third week there, or fifth week there, you know, the pastor gets up there and does a message,
1:00:55
and it's critical race theory laced with and, you know, you know, discredits the word and, you know,
1:01:02
diminishes any sort of view of, of, you know, authority of scripture. Like, just go find a new
1:01:07
church. You don't need to, you don't need to talk to anybody. You don't need to say anything. Like,
1:01:11
don't give your money. Go find some new, you know, new place. If you've got, you've got five minutes,
1:01:16
you want to write them an email and why you're not staying there. Maybe that's beneficial that they
1:01:19
hear that and puts a little pressure on them. But bottom line is they're probably not going to respond
1:01:23
to you and, or care what you think if you've not been invested there. So just go someplace else.
1:01:28
If you've been at a church for a while, you know, maybe you're sitting right now, you know, under,
1:01:32
you know, furtick or, or Stanley, and I don't think that furtick and stand, Stanley are at the same
1:01:38
place. I think that, you know, in terms of ideologically, I think that Stanley is probably most likely
1:01:44
much further down this kind of progressive rabbit hole than furtick is, but furtick is,
1:01:49
is on the journey, you know, with that. Well, just before we hopped on here, Lucas, I saw
1:01:55
where today, so we're recording this guys, we're recording this at the end of June, just today,
1:02:00
elevation church, because of the saddleback thing, they've pulled out of the SBC.
1:02:05
That's enormous news, which is news to me that they're even in the SBC, because some of the stuff
1:02:09
that's taught there. Yeah, I didn't know they were even in the SBCs, but they officially signaled
1:02:13
that they are no longer part of the SBC. So it seems like they're going to be going down that,
1:02:17
that path of pace. Yeah, yeah, very interesting. No, I hadn't seen that yet. So yeah, I mean,
1:02:21
look, these guys are on that journey, they're on that path. And, and the, I think that the other,
1:02:28
like, if you're at a church, if you're attending one of these churches, you're plugged in and you
1:02:32
start having concerns, you need to go to your pastor or the church leaders and talk to them.
1:02:36
And I'm not saying that you don't still leave, but you need to at least have the conversation.
1:02:39
If you've been there for a time and you have relational equity that you've developed,
1:02:43
I don't even like using the word equity for this, right? But relational equity that you've developed,
1:02:47
you know, to be able to go have those conversations, you need to ask them the tough questions and just,
1:02:51
you know, flat out, where do you stand on critical race theory? Where do you stand on this? Where
1:02:55
do you stand on Marxism? Where do you stand on, you know, the Bible is the word of God? You know,
1:02:59
what do you think about, you know, do you believe that as a Christian and as a disciple that,
1:03:03
you know, it's acceptable to, you know, to be Democrat, you know, and like, I'll answer,
1:03:08
look, I don't, I think you can be saved and be a Democrat. I just don't think you can be a
1:03:11
disciple and be a Democrat, you know, as an activist, you know, standpoint, because these
1:03:15
ideologies are apart from that. And so, you know, I have, you know, I'm, I kind of leave the salvation
1:03:22
issue up to God, it's not my job to judge that, but you can't tell me that you're actively pursuing
1:03:27
the Lord Jesus as a disciple. And, and, you know, and kind of support these various policies. And
1:03:34
so you need to, you know, where your church stands, we've developed a website, you and I,
1:03:38
you haven't talked about this yet, I don't think called AmericanPastorProject.org. So it's American
1:03:42
PastorProject.org and on there we have a statement of kind of biblical, you know, basically of a
1:03:48
doctrinal orthodoxy position. And it's a commitment to basically that you're going to, you know,
1:03:55
make a commitment to orthodoxy in your, in your pulpit. Podcast hosts are allowed to sign. We
1:04:00
define pastor very broadly for purposes of this, this signature. We want anybody touching Christian
1:04:05
doctrine or Christian conversations to sign this. And the second part of it is a commitment
1:04:11
against wokism in your local pulpit, whether that be a digital pulpit, a physical pulpit,
1:04:14
a literary pulpit, you know, whatever that looks like. And so we've had about 400 pastors already
1:04:19
signed this. It's growing. We just launched it here recently. And it's picking up a lot of
1:04:24
momentum. And I encourage people take this website to your pastor, AmericanPastorProject.org.
1:04:29
If they're a friendly, they're going to read this and go, I'm on board. Absolutely. Tell me
1:04:33
where I signed. They're going to join it. There's no money. They don't have to commit any funds.
1:04:37
They don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops. They're literally just making a commitment saying,
1:04:40
yes, I will commit to this. It's based on upon the nice inquiry, the apostle's creed, very historic
1:04:45
Christianity kind of commitment with some modern language. And if they are offended by it,
1:04:52
then ask them where they stand. Hey, were you able to sign that? Oh, no, I'm going to think about
1:04:56
it some more. I'm not sure. And again, just because they don't sign it, that doesn't mean that they're
1:05:00
necessarily woken of Marxists. They might just be, you know, they don't know, they don't know us and
1:05:04
they don't know if they want to trust this yet, right? But I think that by and large, if you see a strong
1:05:09
pushback when you present this, there's a good chance you're in a woke church. And I think that
1:05:14
you can use this as a litmus test as well as my book and other tools, you know, get your pastor,
1:05:17
copy of woke Jesus or my book, the Christian left and go, you know, or vote his book or Owen's book
1:05:22
or somebody else and go, what do you think about these things, you know, and have that conversation.
1:05:27
And if they're not willing to talk about it, they're not going to engage. If they just go,
1:05:30
well, our job is just to preach Jesus. We don't get into political stuff. That is a sign right
1:05:35
there. And that doesn't mean they're woke. But it means that, you know, if you've, if you're, you know,
1:05:39
bought the lie, that that morality is political, that abortion sexuality, open borders, you know,
1:05:47
marriage, that the, you know, that these are political issues, that's a deception. That's just
1:05:52
where this starts. The left and the media and, and you know, kind of these, this Marxist undertone,
1:05:57
they want the church to accept that all these issues are political. And then to accept the fact
1:06:02
that as the separation of church and state, they can't talk about politics. And so therefore,
1:06:06
you can't talk about any of these issues. And that is a lie. It's, it's, it's asinine,
1:06:11
but too many pastors have bought into that. And, and I think it just remains silent during this time.
1:06:16
Well, it's, it's a lie from the pits of hell. And I, and I would co-sign Owen Strand's Christianity
1:06:20
and wokeness and Vodie Bockham's fault lines. And I would also add Alisa Childers, another gospel,
1:06:25
because she was kind of in one of those churches. And she kind of got hit in the face with some
1:06:29
the stuff that she grew up with. And she had to really reckon with actual biblical theology. But,
1:06:33
you know, most people that are in churches are just content to ride the wave. They'll just go
1:06:37
along to get along or they'll get hung up. And they'll do a two hour long meeting with a pastor
1:06:41
because they get hung up on infant baptism or full immersion versus sprinkling or just some,
1:06:46
some other little thing, which is not unimportant, but it's not core to the message of what the
1:06:50
church is bringing. But Lucas, as we're here about an hour in and as we're kind of winding to a close,
1:06:55
everyone's going to think, gosh, these guys are like best buddies. They said they were going to do
1:06:59
all the, they agree on everything. But Lucas, I got breaking news for you. There was one sentence
1:07:04
in your book that I thought was going to make me puke. And I need to bring that to you. And then
1:07:09
let me tell you why. And then I'll give you a defense. You know, I'll give you some time to
1:07:13
defend yourself for saying something so silly. You ready? Let's hear it. Now, it's not going to
1:07:18
be any of the sentences. If you had to put your top 100 sentences in what Kyle got offended by,
1:07:23
you wouldn't even have this one in there. So here we go. Additionally, it's important that
1:07:28
as Christians, we become known for what we are for more than by what we are against.
1:07:34
Now, the being known for what we're fuller and not what we're against is one of my biggest bugaboos
1:07:40
because I've had some interviews with some people and I've had some other things. And they're using
1:07:45
that phraseology, Lucas, to never address cultural topics, to never address political topics. And
1:07:54
they use that as a, as just kind of basically a stiff arm. But yeah, if you're not a moron,
1:08:00
if you're for something, you're automatically against something else. So if I'm for protecting
1:08:06
the human life growing inside of the womb of a woman, I am anti or against snuffing out that life.
1:08:13
And so I guess that that phraseology has been used by a lot of people that are on the progression,
1:08:20
progressive Christian left. And so I was just shocked to see that in there. Now you followed
1:08:25
it up with a bunch of great arguments, but that just stuck out like a green hat with an orange
1:08:29
bill. I was like, what is he doing? So go ahead defend yourself. No, no, I look, I get it. And I
1:08:35
think that when you've dealt with a history, when you've heard language like that, you know, again,
1:08:40
if I, if that was a tweet from me and I didn't write this book, you should have every reason to be
1:08:46
concerned. But the fact that it is in probably the most, what I would argue is the most jammed
1:08:53
packed, like, you know, truth bomb book of this year that I can, if I can say that, like at least
1:08:59
one of the, you know, coming out of the Christian world, it's what you have to understand from my
1:09:05
position, you know, and especially my last book, number one bestseller was the top Christian book
1:09:09
for six months on Amazon. At last, in 2021, it came out. And I wrote about this a little bit in there.
1:09:16
I kind of alluded to it. And I've seen this rise up. And I think that this is, this is not the main
1:09:21
issue right now, but it's in the back of my mind is a concern about where do we go from here. And
1:09:27
that is that there are a lot of people that will read my work or they'll read Owen or they'll read
1:09:32
Vodie of the Ritalyssa or, you know, somebody else out there. And they'll go, I want to do that. And
1:09:39
basically, they become weaponized. And they, because they don't have the pastoral heart that those
1:09:46
people that I just mentioned have, they don't have the love for others that those people have,
1:09:51
they just have a zealousness for the truth. There's a time in a book of Acts, and, you know, probably
1:09:57
with short, we don't, we don't have a specific clock here. So I'm going to take the time to find
1:10:02
it because it's good. Go for it. I'll make an awkward that takes you too long though. Right,
1:10:07
I know, right. So in Acts chapter nine, this is before Saul kind of takes on this Paul, you know,
1:10:22
you know, language we see in verse 19, it says, Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus
1:10:28
and once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the son of God, all those who heard
1:10:32
him were astonished and asked, isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who
1:10:36
called on his name? So they kind of question him. And then it goes on, it says in verse 22,
1:10:40
you get, "Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving
1:10:44
that Jesus is the Christ. After many days had gone by, the Jews conspired to kill him, but Saul
1:10:49
learned of their plan. Day and night, they kept close watch on him in the city gates in order to
1:10:52
kill him, but its followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the
1:10:55
wall. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him,
1:10:59
not believing that he was really a disciple, but Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles.
1:11:03
He told them how Saul and his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and
1:11:06
so Barnabas basically defending him and says, "So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in
1:11:11
Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. He talked and debated with the Grecan Jews,
1:11:15
but they tried to kill him. When the brothers learned of this, they took him down accessory and
1:11:18
sent him off the tarsus. Then the church throughout Judea Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace.
1:11:24
It was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit. It grew in numbers, living in the fear of the
1:11:27
Lord. I've never heard anybody else preach on this, but one person. But this is the start of Saul's
1:11:33
ministry and it uses words like debated, argued, proved, you know, all these different things so
1:11:40
much so that the disciples have to go. I mean, these are the apostles. They're going, "Bro,
1:11:45
you have to leave town." The church didn't grow and prosper until Paul left. Why? Because he wasn't
1:11:52
ready. This is not talked about enough is that we have people that they read a book and then they
1:11:59
go like, "Man, I'm ready. Put me in." They go out there with the wrong spirit and the wrong heart
1:12:04
and they basically take a Pharisaical attitude. They elevate truth over grace as opposed to mercy
1:12:11
and grace or grace and truth, one in each hand. They go off half-cocked and they end up doing a
1:12:17
lot of damage for the body of Christ. As I'm writing, I'm not just trying to give people
1:12:22
information. Yeah, a lot of my book is history. It's information. It's details. It's definitions.
1:12:27
That's all there. But when you get to the end of my book, and this is, I think, probably where the
1:12:32
quote is, what chapter is that in? The one that you read. I think it was chapter nine or it may
1:12:36
have been chapter 10. Yeah, so it's into the book. This is where I'm basically trying to bring people
1:12:41
back to a... If I can use this term without being stoned to death here, I view this as apostolic
1:12:49
language. I'm not saying that I'm the apostle Paul, but this is a message for vision for where's
1:12:57
the church's marching orders from here? This brings me to kind of, I think, an important point is that
1:13:07
that we have to be able to discern the difference between what I would call primary and secondary
1:13:11
doctrine in this. This is not, I think, talked about enough either. There's some people that say,
1:13:16
"Well, if it's in the Bible, it's primary doctrine." I would say, "Yeah, every true doctrine is primary,
1:13:22
but our ability to be able to discern properly and argue every doctrine... There are primary
1:13:28
doctrines that define Christianity, their apostles' creed, niceing creed, etc. But these
1:13:36
there are secondary beliefs that we can hash out. I could debate once saved, always saved. I could
1:13:40
debate gifts of the Spirit. I could debate, you know, some of these different things. And I believe
1:13:46
that there are things that universally we accept as Christians. There are things that we regulate
1:13:51
to denominational acceptance and that I can respect the SBC, even though I'm not a part of them,
1:13:57
I don't necessarily have to agree with them at every single policy they crank out. I can respect
1:14:02
though their sovereignty as a denomination to be able to hold those views in the same way that I
1:14:06
can respect the assembly of God or I can respect the still biblically minded version of the Lutheran
1:14:14
Church that's out there. I don't adhere to all of their doctrines. I'm outside of all three of those,
1:14:20
but I can respect that there are secondary issues that I want to give them the right to
1:14:24
govern. Even John Calvin talks about this, that there are certain issues that are local
1:14:29
church level issues. Even within those denominations, we can say, "Hey, this is a denominational position,
1:14:33
but we give a local church the ability to define this aspect on the nuts and the bolts as it gets
1:14:39
getting down to these tertiary beliefs that are there." This prevents us from just going on these
1:14:45
blanket witch hunts for everybody that you were wearing a pink shirt, you must be trans-affirming,
1:14:54
so therefore you were going to route you out as a pastor or something like this. As much as I'm
1:14:59
the guy out there on the front line saying, "Guys, progressive Christianity is a problem,
1:15:03
wokeism has invaded, it is catastrophically systematically affecting these denominations."
1:15:09
I also want to be the guy going, "But don't be hasty. Don't go out there and damage relationships
1:15:16
over one sentence, one tweet. Don't throw away operating in love. Don't throw away the purpose
1:15:22
and the foremost aspects of the gospel just for the sake of a witch hunt." I hope that comes out
1:15:29
in there. I think that in the balance of the whole book, for me, it speaks to trying to provide
1:15:37
some wisdom and direction for people as they take this material, just because I've seen the
1:15:43
people that use my material and go, "I had a guy, I'll stop after this and land the plane," but
1:15:49
I was at an event in Florida and had a guy read my last book and he goes, "Man, I read your last
1:15:55
book. It changed my life." He goes, "In fact, as soon as I finished reading it, I went down to,"
1:16:00
it was a presidential candidate on the left rally. He goes, "I went down to that rally." He goes,
1:16:04
"I got kicked out of there because I was up in their face yelling out in the whole time
1:16:08
and doing these things." He literally was pulling stuff out of my books. I mentioned this person
1:16:13
in my book. I'm just going, "This was not the outcome I was hoping for. I want to make sure
1:16:20
that we're providing the whole council of God in this and not just equipping people to be good
1:16:27
debaters." A few things on that. I knew you would give a good question that. I just wanted to tell
1:16:33
you you wrote something that I thought I was going to puke. By the way, when I was typing there,
1:16:37
because my keyboard sounds like artillery is going off earlier, it was so that I could add
1:16:42
into the show notes the American Pastor Project. That's on there now. Also, I found that quote. That
1:16:47
quote was in the very last chapter of your book. It's like in the last six pages of your book. It's
1:16:50
in there back in there. I think that specifically in modern Christianity, even more specifically,
1:16:57
modern Christian men, there's way too much emphasis on grace and not truth. There's way
1:17:02
too much emphasis on lamb and not lion. That's part of the reason why we have the ministry that we
1:17:07
have is to swing the pendulum back. I would never argue that lamb is not important or
1:17:11
grace is not important. I'm arguing that if you put an over emphasis on one over the other,
1:17:16
that you are doing this wrong, because Jesus was not 50% lamb, 50% lion. He's 100% lamb,
1:17:23
100% lion. He's fully grace and fully truth. That's the difference there.
1:17:27
But you do talk about not being ready. We'll make this the last question of the day,
1:17:31
because you've got more books to write and hands to shake and babies kissing, all that kind of stuff.
1:17:35
But you talked about people not being ready. They go off half-cocked, they've read a book,
1:17:40
and now that book is a cleaver. They're a hammer looking for a nail at this point. That's essentially
1:17:47
what they are. But I see the same thing with Christian parents whistling past the graveyard
1:17:53
when it comes to the education of their children. This is what I mean. You will have parents,
1:17:57
because I tell parents all the time, you have two options for educating your kids in modernity.
1:18:02
One, vetted private Christian school. I mean vetted, just because they have a cross
1:18:06
in the lobby, doesn't mean they've been vetted. So vetted private Christian school or homeschool.
1:18:10
That's the only way that you can help dictate how your kids are going to end up thinking about
1:18:14
LGBTQ issues, gender identity or gender confusion, abortion, those types of things. So that's why I
1:18:19
tell them. But I've had a lot of conversations with secular, not secular, but Christian parents
1:18:24
that are like, why would I take my kids out of the public school system? That is their mission
1:18:30
field. And what I try to get them to understand is every time we see a missionary described in
1:18:36
the Bible, they're not minors, they're adults. And also, these were adults that were equipped
1:18:43
before they were sent. Okay. So your 13 year old daughter, who's just walking around the school,
1:18:50
where they've got litter boxes in the bathroom, yes, in Oklahoma, where they've got transgender
1:18:54
bathroom set up against Oklahoma law, yes, in Oklahoma. And you're just like, Oh, well,
1:18:59
that's their mission field. Like we need to be salt and light. And we need to do all those things.
1:19:03
What you're not understanding is they are ill equipped for that environment. Because the entire
1:19:08
environment is weighing them down. And it is a much bigger chance that they are going to implode
1:19:14
or explode than that they are going to create revival inside of their public school. And so talk
1:19:19
to me a little bit about education. And I'm giving you short shrift here, because that's a huge subject,
1:19:23
we could have spent the entire hour plus on this. But Christians are getting the education thing
1:19:28
wrong. And they're just blindly spending $100,000 to send them off to a further indoctrination camp
1:19:34
at a university, some of which they actually take our Christian. And as you detail in your book,
1:19:39
it's not always that clear. So take that set up wherever you want to go.
1:19:42
Yeah, no, for sure. Look, I would, I would generally agree with you, but probably less
1:19:46
dogmatically. And it would say it depends upon where you are in the world. So for instance,
1:19:51
I know of a small town here in Indiana that they have, you know, the principles that their schools
1:19:57
are all Christian. It's a very small community. It's not where I live, but it's near here. They
1:20:04
pray. I mean, I mean, I think they had five different prayers at their graduation, three from adults
1:20:10
and two from students or vice versa. And these were sincere people that love the Lord. It's a very
1:20:16
close knit small town. And they kind of just bucked, you know, the the NEA and, you know, these other
1:20:21
groups. And they said, we're going to keep doing what we do. And they've never taken prayer out of
1:20:24
school. And it's amazing. They prayed before sports of games, everything else. That's a gym
1:20:29
of a school that, that I think that you could have, you know, with, it doesn't mean there's not
1:20:35
couldn't be problems there or that there aren't problems there. But it's, it's a tremendously
1:20:40
safer place than where most people are finding themselves in public school near them. I would
1:20:45
prefer, and my wife and I don't have children. And so, you know, we, we've, we've, you know,
1:20:50
I've been in this, I speak at school boards. I've, I've done a lot of stuff in this space. I've
1:20:54
consulted with a lot of people, you know, reading SEL and DI material and kind of providing expertise
1:20:58
on that, everything else. But you know, I've not had to make this choice personally. I have family
1:21:04
that homeschools are kids. I have, you know, family that does not home to school their kids.
1:21:08
I think that that homeschooling, if it's done by the right parents is is obviously, especially in
1:21:14
the younger years is very superior in a perfect world. Like if I could go back to school, I would
1:21:20
go, I would find some sort of like, you know, and again, this is, you know, there, these,
1:21:26
this can be expensive and everything else. But I would, I would like, I like classical education
1:21:31
from a Christian worldview, you know, so where kids are learning, you know, Greek at an early age,
1:21:36
where they're getting exposed to like real history and in-depth things and understanding
1:21:41
philosophy early on. That's, you know, and that's, that's like the top education that you can find,
1:21:48
if you can find it. But you're right, you have to vet these things. I was a, I was advanced from
1:21:54
my age and my faith. I, you know, shared early on, I started preaching very young. We didn't have a
1:21:59
youth pastor for a time at our church. And I kind of just like, kind of almost like started
1:22:03
ministering to my peers at a young age. I was not the norm, but I will tell you that even myself,
1:22:09
I, I, I, it wasn't that I had a drift in, in kind of my moral structure, but I was somebody who was
1:22:17
enthralled by early, kind of Christian socialism, kind of captured my, my eyes early on. I, I
1:22:24
fortunately did not jump fully, jump off the cliff, but I was on my way. And even in my early 20s,
1:22:30
that was something that was still a little bit mesmerizing. I think the inroad for me on that
1:22:34
actually was more music. And I would actually argue probably more Christian music influence
1:22:39
than the school that I went to. It was, it was kind of the rich molynes, you know, kind of aftermath
1:22:45
of, of, you know, kind of this hippie Christianity and what that produces and, and everything that
1:22:50
came out of that. And that, that's was kind of the door that led to me. And that, I don't want to,
1:22:54
you know, I'm not trying to, you know, badmouth rich. I think that he was, you know, did,
1:22:58
was just tremendous artists, you know, died tragically. If he was here today, I would worry
1:23:04
about which side of the fence he was on. He just died before a lot of this went crazy. And so,
1:23:09
but I think he was a, I think he was an early kind of push in that direction for some people
1:23:14
that, that kind of took his ideas and abused them after the fact. And so, yeah, I think that,
1:23:19
you know, all that say, mostly, I agree with you, there's probably a few exceptions to it,
1:23:23
but regardless parents, you have to be vigilant, you have to be involved, you have to know
1:23:28
everything that is happening and what your kid is being taught, you know, in today's world,
1:23:33
and who they're with and who they're exposed to. And don't be afraid to be a little bit of a jerk,
1:23:38
don't set out to be a jerk, but sometimes you feel like if you're asking a pointed question that
1:23:42
you're somehow sinning, and it's like, please read the New Testament and just read the number of
1:23:47
pointed questions that Jesus asked for the apostles, asked for Paul, asked like, there's a lot of
1:23:51
point in this and the stuff that they're doing. But Lucas, we have covered a lot of ground in the
1:23:55
time we spent together. And there's a bunch of stuff we didn't even get into that. Maybe we got
1:23:58
to do another one of these because I want to talk about black Jesus. I want to talk about
1:24:02
Aryan Jesus. I want to talk about Christian nationalism. But last question in the day,
1:24:05
are we, I don't want to ask if I'm the number one because that's kind of a high, am I in that
1:24:09
upper, are we in that upper tier of conversations you've had or are we are we the top?
1:24:14
memorable. This will be a highly memorable interview. How about that?
1:24:18
Let's go. I will take it and I will put that on a trophy. But that's all for me. Is there anything
1:24:23
else you want to get off your chest? Kyle, no, appreciate it. Excellent host. And you really
1:24:28
appreciate the time. If people want to find out more about me, obviously they can go to LucasMiles.org.
1:24:32
There's pastors churches out there interested in having me in. I do travel and speak and minister.
1:24:36
If you're dealing with school board issues or you're dealing with some sort of issue and you
1:24:41
need somebody to take a look at stuff, my team and I, we try to do as much help as we can for other
1:24:45
people that are out there. Check out American Pastor Project and absolutely pick up a copy of
1:24:49
your woke Jesus. All those will be in the show notes. Lucas Miles, thank you for coming on a
1:24:53
Daunted Life, a man's podcast. Thank you. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with
1:24:58
Lucas Miles. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Adam Daunted
1:25:02
Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual,
1:25:06
mental and physical resilience. So here are the links I've got for you today. I've got a link to
1:25:09
Lucas's website, a link to where you can buy woke Jesus and his other books, and also a link to
1:25:14
American Pastor Project, everything that was mentioned in the interview is right there in the
1:25:18
show notes. Thank you guys for listening to this episode. Wherever you listening to this,
1:25:21
please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak live
1:25:25
at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info@andontin.life. That's i-n-f-o
1:25:31
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1:25:35
everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
1:25:38
Just go to www.andontin.life. Also, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use
1:25:44
their music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is
1:25:48
off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description.
1:25:53
I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
1:25:59
mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.