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1:18
This is "Undaunted Life" a man's podcast.
1:22
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:24
Let's get into it.
1:25
All right, guys.
1:26
We've got a special return guest on the podcast today, and it is the one and only
1:29
Vodie Bacham.
1:30
So if you're not familiar with Vodie, he is a reformed pastor, author, church planter,
1:33
and sought-after speaker.
1:35
He is the Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia.
1:39
He received his MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and his D-Men from Southeastern
1:44
Baptist Theological Seminary and did his postgraduate study at Oxford.
1:47
And he has written a myriad of amazing, amazing books.
1:51
So, "Fault Lines."
1:52
One of them, a lot of you guys are familiar with that.
1:54
It is on our book list of the 100 books every modern Christian man should read less.
1:57
In addition to "Family Shepherds," which is in a tremendous book, every dad has to read
2:01
that book, but he's got a new book out now.
2:04
It's called "It's Not Like Being Black, How Sexual Activists Hijacked the Civil Rights
2:09
Movement."
2:10
And I got to tell you, I've read a good amount of books for 2024 so far.
2:12
This is my favorite book that I've read so far in 2024.
2:15
I said that during the interview, I said that to him before the interview.
2:18
And what's interesting about this is if you guys listened to episode 505 of this podcast,
2:23
I told you, "Vodie Bakken was unlike my Mount Rushmore of guests that I had tried and tried
2:28
and tried to get on the show and just wasn't able to get him on the show, you know, took
2:32
us maybe three or four years to solidify the last interview.
2:35
And now it just seems like, "Well, every time he writes a book, I guess we'll just have
2:37
him on the show."
2:38
So, I feel very, very thankful for that.
2:40
But I was very thankful to do this interview because this book is going to get panned and
2:45
crushed and shadow banned way more than "Fault Lines."
2:47
Because in "Fault Lines," he went after kind of the racial narrative happening inside the
2:51
United States, and now he's taking on the actual sacred cow of the LGBTQ+ lobby.
2:56
And that's going to be a tremendous thing.
2:58
They're going to absolutely come after him.
3:00
This book is out now, and once you read it, you'll get exactly, you know, why I'm saying
3:04
that.
3:05
But we do talk a little bit about, you know, the continued success and relevance of "Fault
3:08
Lines."
3:09
But then we dig into the book.
3:10
We talk about this idea of how sexual minorities has become this thing that people really are
3:15
focused in on.
3:17
And it's all because we've bought into this idea as a culture that sexual orientation
3:21
is no different than race.
3:23
And so, we talk about the non-evidentiary basis of that.
3:26
We talk about the process that was put into place to normalize these things.
3:31
We talk about some of the very, very important people that are part of that.
3:35
So we talk about Alfred Kinsey and John Money and Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen.
3:39
We also talk about the fact that we live in kind of this post-Obergfeld world where we
3:43
just think, "Oh, well, I guess marriage has been redefined.
3:46
No biggie.
3:47
Let's all move on."
3:48
And we talk about how if you seed that ground, you're seeding ground in a bunch of other
3:51
areas.
3:52
And part of our problem is because we do have a lot of weak need pastors that just are go
3:56
along to get along.
3:57
They just want to be known for what they're for and not what they're against.
4:00
And they've kind of allowed for some of these things to come in.
4:03
We talked about all kinds of other stuff in this interview.
4:05
We really weaved in and out of a lot of different areas.
4:08
And we talked about Martin Luther King Jr. a little bit as well, because everyone just
4:11
thinks he's completely off limits and can't be critiqued.
4:14
And we do talk about that a little bit, but guys, I was very, very happy to have him back
4:17
on.
4:18
I'm very happy to share it with you.
4:19
So without further ado, let's get into it.
4:22
Vodie Bock, and welcome back to another life of man's podcast.
4:25
And I just got to tell you right from the beginning, I've never been so self-conscious
4:29
of what I'm wearing because typically I just go with the regular old black t-shirt so it's
4:32
not a finned.
4:33
But look at you.
4:34
You look fantastic.
4:35
Yeah, man.
4:36
Thank you.
4:37
It's good to be with you.
4:38
Well, I'm excited to dig into all this today, but before we dig into the new book, so the
4:43
new book is absolutely fantastic.
4:44
I'm very, very excited to dig into that.
4:46
I want to talk just a little bit about fault lines because I'm curious as you were writing
4:51
fault lines because I had a similar conversation about something similar with Carl Truman when
4:55
he wrote one of his latest books, he had no idea it was going to have the impact that
4:59
it had when you were writing fault lines.
5:02
Did you think that still in 2024 that it would be selling, that it would be relevant,
5:07
that people would be referring back to it, that people would be asking you to do interviews
5:11
just to talk about that book.
5:13
Did you think that was happening when you're writing it?
5:16
I hoped it would.
5:18
I really believed that it was an important moment.
5:24
I really believed that I had something that I needed to say in that moment that I did.
5:31
I really did hope that it would help people.
5:34
I felt like people were searching and wanting to understand what was going on.
5:41
I had been talking about these things for a while and seeing people helped by that.
5:46
I really hoped that it would have that kind of impact.
5:50
I also expected that it would elicit the negative response that it did as well.
6:00
Not too surprised.
6:01
Well, it certainly had that.
6:03
We added it to our book list on our website.
6:05
We have a book list called The 100 Books Every Modern Christian Man Should Read List and
6:08
Fall Lines are certainly on there, and any time you write something that's even vaguely
6:11
controversial in this space, people are going to blow it up.
6:15
That's certainly going to happen with your newest book, which, guys, if you're listening
6:18
to this all in time, it is out now.
6:19
It's not like being black, how sexual activists hijacked the civil rights movement.
6:26
I told you this off-air, but so far in 2024, I have not read a better book.
6:29
It was just an absolutely fantastic book.
6:31
I mostly read it on a plane, which is not really my favorite place to read.
6:35
It's kind of hard for me to concentrate, and I felt like I was just zoned in from the very
6:39
beginning, but I feel like, Vodie, the best way for me to introduce this book to the audience
6:43
is to actually read a quote from your conclusion.
6:47
I'm going to be reading a lot of quotes from the book today, and so guys, if you hate hearing
6:50
me read out loud, you're going to absolutely hate this, but let me read this quote from
6:52
the conclusion.
6:54
Writing this book has been one of the most challenging and emotionally draining undertakings
6:57
of my life.
6:58
I've grown weary of being accused of catastrophism, homophobia, fascism, and plain old hatred
7:04
in the course of the 20 years that I've passed since I first began speaking about it.
7:09
I have faced protests at live events, threats of violence, and censure of various types.
7:13
I also have grown weary of reading, hearing, and seeing things that grieve my soul as I
7:17
research this topic.
7:19
So I guess first question of the day, Vodie, is why in the world did you write this book?
7:23
If it was going to be this, this horrible, big task, like why did you write it, then I
7:28
guess go ahead and give us the thesis of the book, and then we'll dig in.
7:32
Yeah, well, it's interesting, you know, this is kind of a second version of the book.
7:40
Back 2010 to 2012, I wrote a proposal for, it's not like being black.
7:48
You know, we were coming off the Prop 8 decision in California, which was in 2008.
7:54
The advocate, you know, leading game newspaper responses to that with a cover page or as a
8:01
magazine around the cover page article, "Day is the New Black," and I had become aware of
8:08
the book after the ball.
8:11
Some title of that book is "How America will Overcome its Fear and Hatred of Days in the
8:15
Decade of the 90s."
8:16
It was written in 1989, and it blew my mind.
8:22
It read like history.
8:23
Now, it was the strategy written in 1989, but reading it, you know, 2010 or so, it read
8:31
like history.
8:32
Like somebody went back and said, "This is what they did," but what it was was a strategy.
8:36
So I was trying to write warning and mobilizing people against the march toward same-sex marriage.
8:45
Christian publishers didn't want to publish the book.
8:48
Like nobody wants to publish the book.
8:52
Some very large Christian publisher, my literary agent, sent the proposal.
8:56
I mean, the whole big proposal for the book, like it's a big drawn-out process.
9:01
They sent the proposal, and he got a rejection email, but he contacted me and he sent me
9:07
the email.
9:08
He said, "Pay attention to the time I sent the email with the proposal," and the time
9:14
he sent the rejection.
9:16
It was like 15 minutes, man.
9:19
So, you know, I've been writing and teaching about this.
9:24
There's messages of mine, sermons, lectures, you know, gay is not the new flag, you know,
9:29
for over a decade, you know, that have been circulating.
9:33
And so, Obergefell happens, and then the bottom fell out.
9:38
I mean, the bottom fell out.
9:40
Things started moving so rapidly after Obergefell.
9:45
When Christians started talking about, well, we really stopped talking about the issue
9:52
of same-sex marriage.
9:53
It was like, okay, let's move on, right?
9:57
And so, as these things began to proliferate, and as I saw, the costs starting to mount.
10:05
And what I mean by that is, you know, people being told, bake the cake, you know, or have
10:11
your business shut now, people losing their coaching jobs, people losing their teaching,
10:17
you know, in positions, you know, people losing their, you know, jobs and families and all
10:22
these sort of things, that, you know, sort of erasmic again.
10:28
But then, when people went from attacking God's plan for marriage, family and human sexuality,
10:39
to attacking the very fabric of creation itself, right, there is no male, there is no female.
10:48
If I declare that I'm this, then you're, you know, it was like our Caesar is Lord moment.
10:55
It's like the culture is saying to us, I know you see a man in front of you, but you will
11:02
declare that this is a woman or you will pay the price.
11:06
Bend the need to Caesar right now, or you will pay the price.
11:10
I mean, it was just a bridge too far.
11:12
And then finally, I'll say this, in fault lines, you know, I use the illustration or
11:18
in talking about the critical social justice movement, I use the illustration of a train.
11:23
And there's many box cars on this train.
11:26
And I was saying back then, you know, the so-called racial justice box car is a box
11:35
car that a lot of people felt comfortable, you know, jumping onto.
11:39
But behind that box car was this sexual identity box car and the immigration box car and the
11:47
climate change box car and the, you know, and so on and so on and so they're all part
11:52
of the same train.
11:53
So this is really a continuation of making people aware of what's happening with the
11:57
critical social justice movement with critical theory and critical race theory and intersectionality
12:04
and so on and so forth.
12:05
So this is a continuation.
12:06
I know it's a long way to answer the question, but yeah, no, this is perfect because you're
12:10
setting up so many different through lines that we're going to talk about here.
12:13
But just recently you're in Jacksonville now, I was in Jacksonville giving a presentation
12:16
called defeating pro abortion arguments.
12:18
And I talked about it's like, guys, when you're defeating a pro abortion argument, you're
12:21
not just a feeding a pro abortion argument, you're defeating an entire worldview.
12:24
Because who do you know that is like, I mean, what would you say, anti gun, anti-Israel,
12:30
pro drag queen story, our pro-transing the kids and pro life?
12:33
Yeah.
12:34
That person doesn't exist.
12:35
Like you're, you're taking on a panoply of demonic sources.
12:39
And the thing about this is there's really a key point in the book and I'll read this
12:42
quote.
12:43
And at the heart of much of the change is the idea that the battle is for the rights
12:47
of so-called sexual minorities.
12:50
And it's the latest front in America's civil rights struggle stemming from a single lie
12:53
that took root in our culture.
12:56
Sexual orientation is no different than race.
12:59
And so just that line alone, Vodie, if you'd written that book back whenever you had first
13:03
gotten the idea, you would have, you may not have a career now because you would have
13:06
been like, ah, you know, it's Prio Bergfeld, like this isn't that big a deal.
13:09
Like you're being, you know, you're catastrophizing.
13:12
But talk to me a little bit about this sexual minority status.
13:15
And in addition to that, the fact that there's a non evidentiary basis for the social upheaval
13:21
that we've caused, there is no evidentiary basis whatsoever in any discipline to say that
13:27
sexual orientation is no different than race.
13:30
So talk to us a little bit about that.
13:31
Yeah.
13:32
I mean, you're right.
13:34
I was accused of catastrophizing of making too much of this of, you know, all sorts of
13:40
things.
13:41
But I mean, that's the play.
13:44
And when you look at the documentation and the strategies, you know, from not just back
13:52
in the 80s, but all the way back in the 50s, there was some of this among civil rights
13:58
leaders, right?
14:00
I have some quotes in the book from one of Dr. King's speech writers, right?
14:07
Right.
14:08
You know, who was a notorious, you know, homosexual who had been arrested for, you know, homosexual
14:15
for lewdness in California, name was, you know, Bayard Rustin.
14:20
And I mean, in no uncertain terms, he stated that homosexuals were the next phase in this.
14:27
They didn't believe that Dr. King was the right one to put forward that particular argument.
14:33
And they had others in mind to put forth that particular argument.
14:37
But so this was, this was there, right?
14:40
This was there even back then in, you know, the 1950s, 1960s, so on and so forth.
14:45
So, you know, for me, knowing that, understanding that, you know, ideas have consequences, right?
14:56
And it just made sense.
14:58
And it also made sense that if we bought that argument that that this was akin to rights,
15:07
then eventually what would happen is the same rules would have to apply exactly.
15:15
They can talk religious freedom all they want.
15:18
And if it's the same thing, then I can't say no to a gay couple coming to my church, right?
15:28
Any more than I can say no to a mixed race couple coming to my church, if it's the same
15:32
thing, right?
15:33
If it's the same thing, and not only have to bake the cake, but, you know, if I'm a
15:38
paid-o-baptist, I got to baptize the child, you know, again, I've got to do, I've got
15:44
to, if it's the same thing, and for the longest time, they've been looking us in our face
15:49
saying, "We're not arguing for that."
15:52
This is not going to, no, this is not going to bother anybody, right?
15:58
We just want to love who we love, you know, and now it's bake the cake, make the dress,
16:04
or lose your business, you know, and eventually it will be stop preaching and teaching those
16:11
portions of Scripture, you know, or else.
16:15
Well, Vodie, it was like, it was little by little by little, and then all at once.
16:20
Like that, that's how all these things go.
16:21
It's like, it's a trickle, a trickle, a trickle, and then it's Niagara Falls.
16:24
Now, at risk of blowing up my own interview here, because I have so much more about the
16:28
book that I want to talk about, you talked about Martin Luther King Jr., so if we had
16:31
time today, I wanted to bring that up, because you make some very heavy implications in the
16:36
book that you see Martin Luther King Jr. as a flawed man, as we all are, but a very particularly
16:43
flawed man with bad theology, and I don't know if you have anything to do with the forthcoming
16:48
Uncle Tom 3.
16:49
That's coming out.
16:50
I know you were in Uncle Tom 2, but I know that they are going to be basically going right
16:54
at Martin Luther King Jr., who it's hard to find a more universally beloved figure in humanity
17:02
than Martin Luther King Jr., but then when you actually dig into his theology and hear
17:08
about some of the things that he did in his personal life and some of the sexual deviance
17:11
that he displayed, it tinges him a little bit differently, and so it's like, "Okay, do
17:16
we look at him the same way we look at Thomas Jefferson who gave us the Declaration of Independence
17:21
and he was a slave owner and a rapist?
17:24
How do we hold Martin Luther King in tension of who he was as a man?"
17:31
I think that's the answer. We have to hold that in tension. We have to be able to hold
17:35
that in tension.
17:36
For example, that's what I'm doing in the book, right? I acknowledge that, but my point,
17:41
my point in bringing up King is that all of this stuff about white Christian nationalism
17:50
is a farce. All of this stuff about Christians being dangerous because we want to bring our
17:57
faith to bear in the public square is a farce because simultaneously we uphold the civil
18:07
rights movement and Dr. King in particular, the Reverend Dr. King, who was doing the very
18:14
same thing, right? If you look at his speeches, if you look at the things that he's arguing
18:21
for, if you hear him in the March on Washington, he's doing the very same thing that we now
18:27
call white Christian nationalism. My point with bringing him up in particular is to say,
18:34
we don't have a problem whatsoever with people arguing for and pushing for their faith to
18:43
be applied when it's in the areas that we approve of. No, we absolutely don't have
18:53
a problem. When liberal Christians, for example, are arguing for inclusion of homosexuals and
19:02
when liberal Christians are arguing for whatever, feminist, ideology, whatever, when liberal
19:07
Christians are doing that, people are not saying, "Hey, you've got to stop that." When
19:13
liberal Christians are doing that, they're being celebrated. I used Dr. King really to
19:18
explode the myth of white Christian nationalism and our supposed fear of it.
19:24
What's funny about that, in my defeating pro-abortion arguments talk, I bring up the
19:29
top 18 common pro-abortion arguments and how to systematically defeat them, and my favorite
19:33
is no uterus, no opinion, because they don't care about people that agree with them. If
19:41
they agree with them, like the all-male Supreme Court that decided to Roe v. Wade, abortionists,
19:48
mostly male abortion, clinic owners, mostly male politicians that make pro-abortion laws,
19:53
it's like, "Wait a minute, those guys get to have an opinion because you agree with them.
19:56
It seems like you're full of crap." That's basically a point with that one.
20:01
What do we say? This is a decision between a woman and her doctor. If her doctor is a
20:10
man... Exactly. You've got a major presidential candidate in R.K. Jr. that says this is a decision
20:23
between a woman, her doctor, and her spiritual advisor. I said, "Okay, bet. Let me just assume
20:27
that's true. What if I consult with my spiritual advisor, whatever that means, and my doctor,
20:33
whoever that happens to be, and they all decide along with me that I can walk next door and
20:37
stab my neighbor in the face." It's like, "But hey, Mr. Police Man, I consulted with my doctor and
20:43
with my spiritual advisor and they said it was okay. We would never accept that in any other corner
20:48
of culture, but apparently with that we do." But to get back to really some of the points you made
20:52
in the book, and guys, there's way too much to the book for us to cover today. There's an amazing
20:57
story about when you first started talking about this at the Texas Senate and Austin, Texas, back
21:03
in the early 2000s. You had to dust up with a senator, and he wishes that he didn't show up to
21:07
work that day by the time you were done with him. But I want to talk about the slow, calculated,
21:14
methodical process of normalization of things that used to just be like abominable. And we all
21:21
thought of it as abominable. And you actually pull out these five steps in the book and you point
21:25
them out. Step one was change the name of the sin. Step two, transform the behavior from a sin
21:33
to an identity. Hello. Step three, juxtapose that identity with the civil rights struggle of
21:39
black people and other minorities. Step four, replace Christianity of the Bible with an apostate
21:45
version that picks and chooses rights, rituals, and morals to suit the new regime. Hello. And then
21:50
step five, pretend to be surprised when other groups use the same tactics to try to normalize
21:56
the unimaginable. Again, if you had read these steps off in 2014, pre oh Bergfeld, pre Donald
22:06
Trump being president pre COVID pre lockdowns pre BLM pre all that stuff, he would have been like,
22:11
Kyle, why are you being so ridiculous? This is so far outside the over 10 window. This isn't
22:17
actually happening. And yet this is the playbook that they followed and got to say work like a charm.
22:24
Yeah, it did work like a charm. And it ought to terrify us when we think about what's coming next,
22:31
because these steps are being followed, for example, with pornography, these exact same steps. I mean,
22:40
I'm not a poor pornography, but, but Pedophilia. Hey, look at me, Pedophilia, Paul and Mary, all of
22:46
that. Yeah, yeah, all of them that we're following the exact same steps. You know, we don't talk about
22:54
pornography anymore. We talk about, or, you know,
23:01
sex workers or yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we don't talk about pedophiles anymore. We talk about minor
23:07
attracted persons. Right. Right. Or so they're maps or they're no maps, non offended, minor
23:15
attracting persons, you know, we don't do that. We don't talk about polygamy. We talk about
23:23
consensual non monogamy, right? That's the first step. Everything is. Yeah, man, you change,
23:34
you change the, you know, you change the name of it. And then, of course, you know, the sin just
23:41
becomes an orientation and identity. You know, this is who I am. It's one thing. It's easy
23:50
to argue against a behavior, right? But now, once I'm arguing against, you know, a person's core
23:58
identity, especially if they've identified themselves as an oppressed minority. Well, now, you know,
24:03
I'm, I'm, I'm the devil, you know. So yeah, that's, that's, that's what we do, you know, and at the
24:12
end of the day, when, when more stuff comes down the bike, we, we just act like we were, we were
24:17
surprised. But the, but the piece of finding, finding apostate Christians who will embrace,
24:24
embrace it, that's an incredibly important piece. You find Christians who believe little and practice
24:31
less. And they accept these things. And then we shine a light on them. In order to say,
24:41
look at what real Christ followers are like. Right. The rest of these people, you know, are just,
24:51
you know, narrow minded, bigoted, Nazi nut jobs. But these people over here who believe none of the
24:58
Christian message, who deny every essential doctrine of the Christian faith. These people
25:05
are the paragons of Christian virtue. And that's an important piece for them, which is ironic,
25:12
because again, they don't want Christianity in the public square.
25:15
Hey guys, real quick, as you've likely heard me talk about on the show before,
25:18
it took me forever before I started taking supplements of any kind. I was always nervous
25:23
about taking like whey protein and creatine or really anything beyond that, because I was just
25:27
afraid of what was in the product. And if it was going to like give me cancer someday or something
25:31
like that. And I was always scared of these companies, these supplement companies, just cutting corners
25:36
and using low quality products and eventually putting things in their products that could
25:40
cause problems for me and my body. So I've always wanted to partner up with an American company
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that uses high quality ingredients in their supplements. And that's why I want to remind you
25:48
guys that we are partnered with Jocko Fuel. So Jocko Fuel is Jocko Willing's American-based
25:53
supplement company. So what are some of my favorite products that they make that I also use?
25:57
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26:47
One of the funny thing about it as well is those people will constantly be like,
26:51
look at them. These are paragons of virtue and tolerance. And it's like, well,
26:56
we don't get tolerance of sin as a biblical value. It's like, okay, pastor of this, you know,
27:01
woke left leading church. Where exactly do you get this idea that we are to be tolerant of the
27:06
sin within the sinner? Because I certainly don't get that when I read any of the gospel accounts,
27:11
because I see a Jesus, a Christ, a Savior that is dealing not only with the sinner, but with the sin
27:16
that the sinner is perpetrating. And obviously that just, you know, you can't even talk about
27:20
sin anymore because that's way too judgmental. But you mentioned it in your first answer earlier
27:24
Vodie, we're living in this post a Bergfeld world, where it's almost as if for some people,
27:31
church history started in 2015, how we are to do culture and how we are to quote unquote love our
27:37
neighbor started in 2015. So let me read this quick quote from the book here. A Bergfeld has far
27:42
reaching consequences. The standardization of same sex marriage overturned thousands of years of
27:47
human history and tradition, threaten the fabric of Western society, our civilization and laid the
27:52
groundwork for the persecution of Christians. You said it best when you said most people look at
27:59
this as like, Hey, it's been decided. It's no big deal. I remember prominently during the run up to
28:04
the 20, I think would have been 16 election. Ted Cruz was asked this. I think it was just him and
28:10
Trump were left for the, for the Republican nomination. And Ted Cruz was asked about gay marriage.
28:15
And he's one of the most conservative people in public life. And he said, look, it's the law of the
28:19
land. I don't think the federal government should have any standard. I think it should just be up
28:23
to the States. But it is what it is. We can't really fight on it now. And it's, it's not even
28:27
in the top 25 of things that people are most fed up about. But it's one of those things that
28:33
it signals a, a certain kind of sickness within our culture that has to be eradicated. But no one
28:40
seems to be worried about it. So talk to us a little bit about kind of this post a Bergfeld
28:44
milieu we seem to be living in. Yeah. That was a Caesar's Lord moment. That that was a moment where
28:54
the government said, we get to determine reality, right? Marriage is antecedent to
29:05
culture, to government. I mean, it was here long before our government was here. Our government
29:11
didn't invent marriage. It didn't give the right to marriage. It didn't take, it didn't take the right
29:19
of marriage away from groups of people who are arguing that their rights were being taken away.
29:26
I mean, you can no more take the right to marry away from a same-sex couple,
29:32
then you could take the right to become pregnant away from a man.
29:35
Correct. The government can't take, you know, the right to something away when that something
29:42
doesn't even exist. And so when they did that, when they made that declaration,
29:48
that was a real Caesar's Lord moment. And I think, you know, once you've gone down that road,
29:57
once the government can dictate reality, once the government can, you know, be seen to give
30:03
rights as opposed to acknowledging the rights that were given by God, that that's a dangerous
30:09
place to be. And that's where we are. When I guess, and we'll get to we can need pastors
30:16
here in a second, okay, because we'll actually know what we're going to do right now. There's a
30:20
great quote from the book. I just need to make sure I go back and remember something else. And I
30:23
love this quote, "The day will come when the full weight of the law will be brought to bear on
30:28
churches that hold to a biblical view of marriage to obey man's law rather than God's law." And you
30:34
talked about that a little bit earlier. And I think when that time comes, Vodie, that we will
30:38
see these pastors, pastors fold like old lawn chairs, because pastors in America specifically
30:44
have been asleep at the will. They've allowed things like this to happen. I'm reminded of what
30:51
Eric Metax has talked about in Letter to the American Church, where he talked about, hey, if,
30:54
you know, a few hundred more, a few thousand more pastors in Germany had opposed the rise of Hitler
31:01
and the Nazi Party, there would have been no Third Reich, no Holocaust, no World War II,
31:05
and tens of millions of people would would be alive or would have stayed alive. And it would
31:10
have changed the entire course of history. And another quick quote before I get your comment here,
31:13
"Sermons on homosexuality these days died the death of a thousand qualifications,
31:18
not because the Bible gives special status to the sin of homosexuality, but because we've been
31:23
jammed." So in the book, you talk about this concept of jamming, but I just got to tell you Vodie,
31:27
for every John MacArthur, for every Vodie Bockham, there seems to be a thousand pastors
31:34
that are go along to get along. Hey, I want to be known for what I'm for, not what I'm against,
31:38
pastors. And then guess what? That small trickle, one drop, one drop, one drop. They don't realize
31:44
what's happening until the Niagara Falls are falling on top of their head. Go.
31:48
Yeah, and that process is a process that's outlined in the After the Ball book,
31:57
the 1989 book. And it's a three-step process. It starts with desensitizing. Get the images out
32:04
there and get people used to seeing them. Get the idea out there. Start with shows like
32:11
Will and Grace, back in the day, where you get people used to the idea of homosexuality,
32:16
homosexuals on the screen, homosexual characters always have to be the best dressed,
32:21
the most witty, the most intelligent, the conscience of the show. And so we desensitize,
32:27
get used to it, people who stop being offended because they get so used to it.
32:30
Then there's jamming. And jamming, just think about the idea of juxtaposing the image of
32:39
someone who's against same-sex marriage, with the image of the Nazis and skinheads,
32:45
and so on and so forth. And so you just, they're terrible people. So people don't want to be
32:52
referred to that way. And so as opposed to just stating their position, now they defend themselves
33:00
against that image before they state their position and they state their position less
33:08
forcefully because of that image that's been created in their mind. And the last step is conversion.
33:13
And conversion is taking a person from being in opposition to being an ally.
33:22
And I mean, that's exactly where we are. And when you see or hear sermons of homosexuality,
33:31
and they start in a way that no sermon on any other sin would ever start, like a pastor would
33:38
never stand up and preach on adultery and say, "Listen, I have a lot of friends who are adulterers.
33:44
I love adulterers. God loves adulterers." He's not going to start that sermon that way
33:52
for any other sin that's discussed in the Bible, but he absolutely starts that way
33:56
on a sexuality because we've been jammed. Yeah, I mean, it's such an important thing for us to
34:01
think through as we're kind of going through the different topics that you bring up in the book.
34:06
And that's the thing as you're reading through the book, you're going to be like, "Oh, my gosh,
34:09
this is happening." And for a lot of people, they don't really realize this was happening. Maybe they
34:13
got surprised. There are people that work 12-hour shifts on a rotating schedule and like they don't
34:19
listen to a bunch of podcasts and they're not in the news. And they just, they kind of see things
34:22
being a little different culture and they're wondering if they're just an old, funny, duddy.
34:26
But it's like, no, this stuff is actually happening and there's some nefarious people behind it.
34:30
And that's one of the, one of my favorite parts of the book is where you talk about
34:33
four men who contributed directly to this modern thinking about sexuality, about sexual identity,
34:40
queerness, all that kind of stuff. So you detail Alfred Kinsey, John Money, Marshall Kirk, and Hunter
34:46
Madsen. Now, we don't have time today to dig into all four of those guys. So to everybody listening
34:51
to this, make sure you go out and get the book. But I'd like for our time, Vodie, for us to focus
34:55
on Kirk and Madsen, right? So we're going to get a little bit of a two-for-one here.
34:58
Because Kirk and Madsen, well, actually, let's talk about Kinsey and Money. So Kinsey and Money are
35:04
two of the two of the most evil men that you could possibly hear about, two absolutely horrifically
35:08
terrible men. They are detailed and talked about in the documentary, "What is a Woman on the Daily
35:13
Wire?" You talk about them in the book. And I think most of them have heard, most people have
35:16
heard about them at this point. But I don't think most people have heard about Marshall Kirk and Hunter
35:20
Madsen. I don't think anybody knows those names. And for me personally, I didn't know those names
35:25
until I read the book. So give us an idea of who these two men are and how they directly
35:31
contributed to our current societal moment. So Kirk and Madsen are the two authors of the book
35:37
that I referenced earlier after the ball. And they were Harvard professors, one in marketing
35:45
and one in psychology, and what they put forward in after the ball. And after the ball was just
35:52
the book form. They had done articles on this and had been speaking on this and rallying
36:00
the homosexual community around this, particularly in the late '90s. And for those youngsters out there
36:07
who are wondering why the late '90s would be significant, it's because of the AIDS crisis.
36:13
So the AIDS crisis brought homosexuality and homosexual practice into the forefront
36:21
of the discussion in the culture. And there was a moment there that it was kind of on a razor's
36:27
edge. Because on the one hand, people were talking about the bathhouses in San Francisco and
36:35
other places in New York where gay men would go just for random-alisted sexual hookups and how
36:46
it was spreading this movement, that lifestyle was spreading this disease. And so Kirk and Madsen
36:57
write this book and they kind of have two full purpose on the one hand. And they do have a whole
37:03
chapter in the book saying there's some stuff we got to stop doing or at least stop doing so publicly.
37:07
You know, sort of acknowledging these excesses in the lifestyle. But on the other hand,
37:14
arguing AIDS gives us an opportunity to present ourselves as a minority group in need of sympathy.
37:24
And here's how we can do that. And that's where they proposed this strategy, right?
37:32
This propaganda strategy of, you know, desensitizing, jamming, conversion. At the end of the book,
37:40
they have a bunch of sample ads. You know, these are the kind of ads that, you know, we need to be,
37:46
you know, doing and radio, television, so and so and so forth. And I mean, it's just, it's a
37:53
masterful piece of propaganda. And like I said, if you read it today, it reads like a history book.
38:00
Because it's exactly what happened and it achieved exactly what they wanted to achieve.
38:07
Well, in a nutshell, they have a quote, I think it's from that book, it says,
38:11
"We are safest in the long run if we can actually make them like us." And so, yes,
38:16
it goes back to Will and Grace and it goes back to Modern Family and it goes back to all these
38:20
levelable characters. And what's funny is in the margin of the book, when I read that quote that I
38:24
just read, I wrote Ann Mormons, too. It's like, because what does everybody say about the Mormons?
38:29
Gosh, they're just so nice. They're like literally the nicest people. And so you can get sucked in
38:34
to this, you know, anathema ideology, right, this false gospel because the people are so nice. And
38:40
so I don't think that the Mormons necessarily are doing doing it in the same way and planning
38:45
it out like Kirk and Madsen. But ultimately, that's where we see a lot of this work out.
38:49
But one thing that you attack as well in the book, Vody, is Christians using secular arguments
38:56
to try to prove their point and how that could be problematic in a potential, you know, downfall
39:01
of their argumentation from the beginning. So let me read this quote here. For too long,
39:05
Christians have swallowed the poison pill of trying to make secular arguments for our theological
39:10
convictions. Unfortunately, some of the hardest people to convince of the rightness of arguing from
39:15
biblical authority are Christians. Now, I will go ahead and throw myself at the mercy of the court
39:21
here. I've done this exact same thing. So I've even said, and I even look at something, what is it?
39:26
In Acts 17, where, you know, Paul is using, you know, he's talking to the Greeks in a language
39:32
that they understand. He's using logic and reason before he goes to any Old Testament texts or to
39:38
his eyewitness testimonies of the things that he's seen. So it's like, hey, use whatever authority
39:44
they're comfortable with to at least start the conversation. But I think for a lot of Christians
39:47
voting as they stay there, they they have accepted this, you know, this false facade and scaffolding
39:55
of, well, there are things secular that need to be argued secularly. And then there are things
40:00
theologically that need to be argued theologically. So how is that and why is that so problematic
40:05
when Christians do this? Yeah, there's a couple of reasons. And number one, I'll say that in Acts
40:09
chapter 17, Paul is absolutely not making a secular argument. He's arguing from the biblical
40:17
meta narrative. His story in Acts chapter 17 is creation, fall, redemption, consummation.
40:24
The God who made the world and everything in it, right? So he quotes, you know, some of their
40:30
philosophers, but while he's making the argument for the biblical meta narrative and the God who
40:38
created the world and the God who will judge, right? And he's talking about sin and redemption
40:44
and all of that. So he's not, he's not doing their philosophy, even though he's, you know, quoting
40:50
their philosophers. The other problem with that is when we agree with them, when they say to us,
41:00
listen, your God is irrelevant to this issue. And then we come back and say, okay, well,
41:08
then I'll make an argument that doesn't rely on God. What we've essentially done is we've
41:13
agreed, they say your God is irrelevant. And we say, okay, I agree with your premise. God is not
41:21
relevant. Now let's have the discussion. No, we can't do that. We must not do that. And it's kind of,
41:29
it's kind of what's gotten us to where we are. They are arguing not just that, you know, same-sex
41:38
marriage, transgenderism, transitioning children, you know, so on and so forth. They're not just
41:44
arguing that those things are okay. They're arguing that those things are okay, because man is God,
41:50
because Caesar is God, because the God of the Bible does not exist. And whatever he says
41:57
is irrelevant, right? That's what they're arguing. And so if you give up on that premise,
42:05
I mean, eventually all roads lead to this debauchery that we're experiencing.
42:11
When I think what it is, is it's seeding ground. I keep going back, I guess, because you
42:16
reminded me, since you're in Jacksonville, and I was just there recently, I keep going back to my
42:19
defeating pro-abortion arguments talk, because from the very beginning voting, I implore the audience,
42:24
please stop seeding ground to the pro-abortion side, like be offensive. That doesn't mean be
42:30
a jerk, but it's like this idea that we need to accept the defensive position in all arguments
42:36
is so foolhardy and foolish. But again, I think people do think that the 11th commandment exists,
42:41
thou shalt be nice, thou shalt be winsome, thou shalt be a doormat, allow people to just run all
42:47
over us, because somehow you got this idea that Christians are pacifistic and should be in all
42:51
circumstances. It's just like, I just don't know where you get that. But also, I think one of the
42:56
best examples we've seen at this recently, Bodie, is when Matt Walsh, who is in charge of the what
43:01
is a woman documentary, works for daily wire, a great voice in the pro-life space in the conservative
43:05
space, Catholics, we've got some issues there. But he was on the Joe Rogan experience, I guess this
43:09
would have been last year. And I think the last hour, so I think they talked for three hours,
43:14
the last hour was them essentially disagreeing about gay marriage. And Matt Walsh basically saying,
43:21
well, you know, for thousands and thousands of years marriage has been defined as one thing. And
43:25
then all of a sudden, the opinion and decision changes because of a ruling in 2015. And I just
43:31
don't accept that. And all that's pretty much all he could say. And all Joe Rogan can say is,
43:36
well, why do you care so much about what people do in their own homes? Why should you be able to
43:42
tell people who they can and can't love? And it was one of the most mind-numbing hours of narrative
43:49
and conversation I've ever heard. Because neither one of them was making a different point. They
43:53
were just rewording the same point in changing who was talking at the time. So how about you help
43:59
us? And you talk about this in the book, when people say, look, Christian, look you, you know,
44:04
right wing, you know, white bigot, like, why do you care so much? Look at you, you can serve
44:10
it a passer. Why do you care so much about what people do in their own homes? You do you and you
44:15
do your Bible studies and you catechize your children and we'll just be over here doing our gay stuff.
44:20
Like, why can't that just be the answer? Yeah, it can't be the answer because marriage is not private.
44:26
Marriage is, marriage is public. Marriage involves the state. Not only that, but marriage is antecedent
44:36
to government. Marriage comes before government. It came before culture. We inherited marriage.
44:43
God gave it to us. We didn't invent it. So when you do something like Obergefeld,
44:48
you are saying that the state has the right to determine what reality is and what our rights are.
44:59
Well, first of all, as Americans, our Constitution makes it very clear our rights come from God,
45:05
right? Our rights don't come from the state. The state just acknowledges those rights.
45:09
The other problem with this is that it's not private in the sense that when we decide
45:17
that marriage is between a man and a man or a woman and a woman or whatever the state says,
45:23
then we also decide that anyone who is holding on to those fundamental foundational ideas
45:32
is now anathema, right? So now our textbooks have to be changed because our textbooks,
45:41
you know, were based on that same definition that we had for thousands of years. So you tell me,
45:47
go home, do your religion at home, catechize your kids, okay, but then my kids go to the school
45:53
and the school says to them that your parents are teaching you lies, falsehoods, evil, bigotry,
46:01
you know, so on and so forth. Then you come and you say to my business, bake the cake or grow out
46:08
of business, make the dress or go out of business. Then you come to my church and you say, do the
46:16
wedding or face the consequences, right? Do the baptism, do the whatever, hire the person or face
46:24
the consequences? Eventually now we're saying, look across the room at that man and declare that
46:31
that man is a woman. I don't care what you see, declare what I said, otherwise you lose your job.
46:40
I mean, how much of this is going to have to happen before we stop recognizing that
46:50
this is not just people in their bedroom. Here's the other thing. There is a God
46:56
period full stop. There is a God. God is the one who gave us marriage. God is the one who made us
47:07
in his image and made us male and female. God is the one who says that marriage is a living,
47:13
breathing picture of the relationship between Christ and his church. It's blasphemy, pure and
47:21
simple and it is absolutely unacceptable. And because of that, the wrath of God has come and
47:28
we're experiencing in our culture in myriad ways that even Joe Rogan has acknowledged and is like
47:38
mind blown over the things that he's seeing, but they all are downstream from the idea
47:45
that we can determine what marriage is and that there is no God. There are no creation ordinances
47:53
and there's nothing that we're beholden to except for the whims of whoever's telling their truth
47:59
more powerfully at the time. Vodie, I love that. I love the way you put it. Let's even put a finer
48:06
point on it because I think people might get lost in the philosophy and they might get lost in some
48:12
of the narratives. What do we stand to lose? And I guess you could say that as Christians,
48:20
as Westerners, what do we stand to lose if we give up the fight for the definition and
48:26
dignity of marriage? Everything. I mean, you know, we stand to lose everything. What marriage
48:37
is the bedrock of civilization? It's the foundation of every culture. If we're saying
48:45
that marriage is no longer meaningful, if we're saying that we can now determine
48:55
that marriage is a right that is given and taken by the state, then what other rights are safe?
49:06
What other creation ordinances are safe? If we can say that a man can become a woman and anybody
49:14
who denies that, right, is now on the wrong side of the law. I mean, we're done. We're absolutely
49:24
done. There is no room anywhere anymore for arguments, for any kind of reality, for any kind of morality,
49:34
and eventually we end up in totalitarianism. One, Vodie, if they can get you, and I'm saying they,
49:43
like the nefarious they, if they can get you to say that that man over there is a woman,
49:48
if they can get you to say, yeah, two men can be married, they can get you to say anything,
49:55
and they have caused you to redefine what capital T truth is, because guess what?
50:00
Capital T truth is not what the majority of humanity agrees inside of this culture that it is true.
50:07
It is what God says is true. And as a Christian, if you claim to stand on the authority of the
50:13
word of God, or in the authority of the revelation of the triune God, you're going to have some issues
50:19
if you seed ground in those two areas. But for the last question of the day, we'll go outside
50:24
the book again, guys, that the book is absolutely fantastic. It's called it's not like being black,
50:29
how sexual activists hijack the civil rights movement, you've got to go pick it up. But you
50:33
talked about a little bit earlier, the closer we get to November, the closer we get to Joe Biden
50:39
and Donald Trump, you know, squaring off, you know, this guy versus that guy who's going to be our
50:43
president and all that, we're seeing more riots, we're seeing more unrest in the country, there will
50:50
very likely be a black criminal suspect that has killed under, you know, interesting circumstances
50:57
and that it'll be perpetrated by a white police officer. There's probably going to be some solar
51:02
flare and there's going to be like a climate change thing. There's going to be all this
51:05
catastrophizing. And we're also going to be hearing about the rise of those white Christian
51:10
nationalists, those people holding their Bibles in one hand and their AR 15s in the other. And it's
51:15
all going to come to a head in November and voting no matter who wins. I don't think it's going to be
51:20
good. Because if Trump wins, he's Hitler, like, it's the end of democracy, even though we're a
51:26
constitutional republic and it's going to be just the craziest thing has ever happened. But if Biden
51:30
wins, it's going to be they stole the election again and we've got to rise up and we've got to do
51:34
all these different things. I got to tell you, I'm a pretty comfortable dude and I'm pretty
51:38
comfortable taking care of myself, but I'm a little bit fearful about what's going to happen to our
51:42
country and to our body politic when it comes to November. I know God's a control, but I'm worried.
51:48
Give me, give me a make me feel better or make me feel worse, but make me feel something.
51:53
Yeah, listen, the kingdom of God is undefeated. That's what we have to remind ourselves of.
52:00
The kingdoms of this world, they rise and they fall, but the kingdom of God is undefeated.
52:06
This is not our home. We're just passing through, right? We're pilgrims in a strange land and
52:15
we need to think of ourselves that way. I want you to live that way and we're not guaranteed ease,
52:23
we're not guaranteed comfort. We've had it well, right? For the last couple hundred years plus
52:32
in America, better than any Christians anywhere and anytime in world history,
52:40
we need to be grateful for that. We need to pray that God will restore it, but if He doesn't,
52:47
again, remember, the kingdom of God is undefeated and we're looking for a city that has foundations
52:56
whose builder and maker is God and as long as we keep that in mind, number one, we don't fret
53:05
unnecessarily, but number two, we can have the courage to stand against the tide because what
53:15
most people do is they don't stand up because of the fear of losing their comfort, but when our
53:23
comfort is not the greatest and highest good, then that fear can't be used against us anymore.
53:29
Absolutely. It is always a pleasure to talk to you, but that's all for me. Is there anything
53:34
else you want to get off your chest? No, man, I just appreciate the opportunity. It's been really
53:41
tough to get information out about this book, as you can imagine. I remember when fault lines
53:48
came out, it debuted as a national bestseller, and I went to the bookstore the next week,
53:56
big national bookstore, and I'm going to the bookstore and up on the shelves in the front
54:02
of the bookstore, they got all the bestsellers and so it was me and me and my family were going
54:07
there and we look at the bestsellers and their books on there that are behind my book on the
54:12
bestsellers lists and stuff, and they're out there. I don't go around the back, they're not there.
54:16
I go to the topics and go to the alphabetical orders, not there, so I go to the desk and I
54:22
say, "Hey, you guys have fault lines?" You look on the computer and they go, "Oh, yeah, we got two
54:27
copies in the back." That was a debut as a national bestseller. If that one was too offensive
54:41
for them to feature prominently, this one doesn't have a chance. I just encourage
54:50
people to go to get it, to write reviews on it, let your friends know about it,
54:56
post about it on social media. My social media posts about the book,
55:00
we try to promote them and that's rejected and then there's shadow bands on other stuff that
55:06
we're putting up. Just pray for us and we just appreciate all the help that we can get and get
55:15
in the word out about it. Guys, it is in the show notes and Vodie, you always have an open
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invitation to my audience. We would love to have you on. You keep cranking out books like this one
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and we'll keep having you on, so until next time. God bless you, Linda.
55:28
There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed the return appearance of Vodie Bockam on the show,
55:33
but before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Adam Dalton's life,
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our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual,
55:40
mental, and physical resilience. The links I've got for you today, I've got a link to Vodie's website
55:43
and then I've got Amazon links to all three of those books that I told you about. It's not like
55:47
being black, fault lines, and family shepherds. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever
55:53
you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review.
55:56
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info
56:01
at undonton.life. That's i-n-f-o at undonton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
56:06
and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like
56:09
this coming your way. Just go to www.undonton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name
56:15
for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is their song Perpetua,
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which is off their self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description.
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I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
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mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
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[Music]