Christmas cheer is everywhere, raising sprits, stress, and sometimes uncomfortable topics of conversation. When you sit down with your family next week, is the turmoil of late-2023 America going to cause division?
With Civil War Reconciliation statues being torn down, and Civil War provoking movies being marketed, it's a fractious start to an election year. You need to prepare yourself with grace and understanding, ready to seek peace and unity, without compromising your convictions.
Christmas cheer is everywhere, raising sprits, stress, and sometimes uncomfortable topics of conversation. When you sit down with your family next week, is the turmoil of late-2023 America going to cause division?
With Civil War Reconciliation statues being torn down, and Civil War provoking movies being marketed, it's a fractious start to an election year. You need to prepare yourself with grace and understanding, ready to seek peace and unity, without compromising your convictions.
One of the best parts about Christmas is spending time with family, but it doesn't always go quite as smoothly as we might like. Welcome back to another T-Rex Talk, and if you're like me, you're going to be spending time with some extended family this coming week. We're going to be traveling, but maybe you have people coming to your neck of the woods and maybe it's people that you don't spend a lot of time with every day, and maybe as you talk over the eggnog and Christmas dinner, things get a little more heated than you expect. This is in no way a slam on your family. It's just kind of pointing out that America is a more fractious and fractured place now than even a few years ago. Now, fortunately, my in-laws are just wonderful people and I think the conversations are going to be incredibly encouraging and edifying all the way around. But I also have a lot of friends with maybe not the same types of relationships with their extended family and there's a little more tension when they discuss how their lives are going. We're heading into a very interesting election here and there's a bunch of really interesting stuff in the news, and that's going to result in some pretty interesting Christmas dinner conversations this year. I want to make sure that we use this opportunity to do this really well and be a blessing to our friends and our families, but also speak the truth, which is extremely necessary.
Speaker 1:Now you might be wondering why I am kind of pessimistic about some of these conversations, and let me give you just one example. The White House has ordered that the Arlington Cemetery Reconciliation Statue, which was built after the Civil War to reconcile Northern and Southern soldiers, that has to be torn down. When you're tearing down the explicitly named Reconciliation Statue, I feel like that kind of sends a message. Now, fortunately, us District Judge Rossi Alston has issued a hold on that, so I'm not sure what will happen in Arlington Cemetery, but I am pretty sure what's going to happen to Rossi Alston. People are already pointing out that he is a Trump appointee judge and in his official portrait he is holding a Bible, so he is obviously one of these here Christian nationalist, white supremacist types, even though he is, in fact, black himself. This is going to be a pretty heated issue and, to make things just a little bit more interesting, there is a new film coming out next year called Civil War. It doesn't talk about something that happened in the 1860s, but something that happens in a near distant future. This film studio, a24, has released the trailer just in time for us all to watch it before Christmas, and that's going to make conversations with family super fun.
Speaker 1:I've talked before about the Overton window and how the Overton window is kind of broken at this point. There are now essentially two windows and there are people who are completely on different pages from one another and they use the exact same materials and photos and quotes and people to prove the exact opposite points. Donald Trump's mugshot is only one example. People are posting that on the left to prove what a terrible person he is. People are posting it on the right to prove what a wonderful, stoic leader he is.
Speaker 1:Kyle Rittenhouse is another perfect example of this kind of polarization, which we talked about during his trial when he was acquitted for murder, and I'm going to link in the description below to an interview that he just did with Piers Morgan, because I think there's some pretty good examples in here of how to diffuse situations. Now Piers Morgan was not trying to diffuse a situation, he was trying to create one. He's extremely pointed in his poking. Now he does do it in an incredibly quiet, refined, unemotional British way, because he is a calm and refined British gentleman all on the surface, but he is poking at a very young man and asking him how he can live with the fact that he has committed not murder he does admit that he has been acquitted of murder but how he can live with having killed these people. And he asks a couple of legitimate questions like would he, with the benefit of hindsight, go back and do exactly the same thing again? But I want you to really focus on Kyle Rittenhouse and not Piers Morgan in this interview, because I think he does a phenomenal job, as I said, at diffusing. He also remains very unemotional, even with all the poking and with all of the prodding. He doesn't have the sophisticated polish of the British gentleman, but he does keep his feet under him and answers the questions in a very direct and unemotional way. All in all, it's a fantastic interview.
Speaker 1:I want you to go and listen to it and I want you to think through the way that they interacting. Both of them are extremely polite and unemotional. Piers Morgan poking and pushing and asking, I would say, some what inappropriate questions. And then Kyle Rittenhouse, calmly and just as quietly and unemotionally, holding his ground and actually pointing out that some of these questions seem inappropriate. When asked the same question multiple times, he gives the same answer multiple times and doesn't stray off into other territory. It is this very gentle holding one's ground that I think is a really good model for all of us.
Speaker 1:So much of online argumentation is all about dunking on other people that it's really easy to kind of bring that mentality to our face-to-face conversations and it is incredibly unprofitable. I'd argue that it's not very profitable online, but it is funny. It's very unprofitable to do face-to-face with family members and not that funny. So listen to that interview and sort of think through some of the interactions that you might have this Christmas with specific people and plan to keep your cool and hold your ground graciously. And let's think through some of the things that might come up, basically because they're in the news. So one of them is Christian nationalism. I know that I mentioned it a couple of episodes ago and I assumed that I would never bring it up again. And when I talked about it it was a little in-house debate between some Presbyterians and, I guess, a few Baptists and it was kind of an in-house debate that people were talking about and I only mentioned it because I thought that it was a good analogy for some of the bigger stuff that's happening on the larger political stage. Well, now Christian nationalism is on the larger political stage.
Speaker 1:People reviewing that Civil War movie from May 24 are talking about how the bad guys are going to be Christian nationalists. Rob Reiner has a new documentary coming out discussing the evils and dangers of Christian nationalism and it's a really fuzzy documentary. He includes footage of parents being arrested at school board meetings as proof that Christian nationalists are just getting out of control. But I think this is actually going to win more people to identifying with the Christian nationalist than anything else, because those parents had a really good point and when they sued the school boards and other civic authorities who got them arrested, they won their cases. Now, obviously, the documentary is not out yet, so I'm not really sure what the points will be, but based on who is being interviewed and their positions in the past and the book that it is loosely based on, I believe that the position is going to be any Christian who is more than say generically pro-life, someone who actually would like to have some sort of opinion or comment about politics, is in fact a Christian nationalist. I keep thinking back to other Rob Reiner movies and quotes from them that make hilarious jokes to bring out at this point. Like he keeps using that phrase Christian nationalist and it doesn't mean what he thinks it means. But it is really important to kind of bring this up and expect to have conversations about this, because the conversation around it keeps growing.
Speaker 1:Last week there were a whole bunch of anti-Christian nationalist billboards that were put up in Oklahoma. That is because there was a gentleman who is more than generically pro-life named Dusty Devers, who was running for Iowa Senate in a special election. People tried to paint him with the Christian National's label and he said fine, I guess I am one. And he went on to win that special election by quite a few percentage points. Meanwhile in Iowa the Satanist Church put up a little statue or effigy of Satan himself next to a nativity set and a man destroyed that and threw it in the garbage. The media paid him as a Christian nationalist and he said fine, I am one, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:This is kind of the way that a lot of labels have been adopted over the many, many years. The term Christian itself was actually meant to be an insult to the followers of Christ way, way back in the first century, and they said well, that is what we are, followers of Christ, we'll take it. During the Reformation, it was the Catholic Church that started calling the Reformers Protestants and they said well, it's true, we are indeed protesting against some of the excesses of the Church, we'll go by that label, it's fine. The Puritans were scorned for pursuing purity and they said well, purity is actually a pretty good description of our aims. They took on these labels in a way that I'll bet you a lot of people are going to take on.
Speaker 1:Christian nationalism. It's gone global. It's not just something that you hear on a weird bizarre T-Rex podcast happening in some distant corner of Moscow. It's kind of everywhere now and you might even hear about it around your Christian dinner this year. But speaking of Moscow, I want to go back to how kind of all this started that in-house debate. Well, people are complaining about the tone and the mood of Moscow when there were these churches and pastors kind of discussing the way that you go about these conversations, because I think that is a really key and important point, and one of the things that I want to say in favor of the Moscow crowd is a number of the pastors from the different churches there said hey, we understand that you may go to a church where the pastor is very critical of the Moscow mood, but you personally are listening to our podcast and reading our books and you have a different opinion. Just say that you disagree and don't defend us. In some ways, I thought this was one of the most encouraging things to come out of the whole debate. These people said look, you don't need to defend us at the expense of unity inside of your church. Just let people know that you disagree and you're open to talk about it, but don't push, you don't have to defend us. We can continue to publish books and podcasts and continue to have this debate.
Speaker 1:You pursue peace and unity inside of your church. This is actually kind of the antithesis of what they were being accused of. So that's another kind of interesting point. So this Christmas, as you are talking with relatives who may or may not be on exactly the same page as you may or may not be looking through the exact same Overton window as you, I think that is a really important point to stick to Seek peace and pursue it. You really want to have family unity. You really want to be able to encourage and benefit each other as you discuss some of these things, and yet it is really important that you not give up ground, that you actually do speak the truth and you actually do state it, sometimes rather bluntly, but in as calm and as unemotional and as clearly as possible. Make the position clear, but then seek the peace and the unity, in addition to pursuing like really flamboyant dunks.
Speaker 1:Internet culture is really good at criticizing for the purpose of deconstructing. That is the most effective kind of criticism that there is on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, and we really need to try not to do this. There needs to be a kind of constructive criticism where the argumentation is to build up, is to educate, is to inform, is to sharpen and strengthen one another, as opposed to just tearing each other down. That needs to be the way that we interact with folks, whether it's Christmas dinner or not, and I'm gonna give you an example which sounds like I'm kind of patting myself on the back, but this is largely accidental I've had a number of people come up to me and tell me that T-Rex videos have built family unity, specifically the video about suppressors and the video about AR-15s.
Speaker 1:Why everyone needs an AR-15 is not a video that I made to dunk on liberals. Now I will admit that there's some people in the house of representatives that said some incredibly dumb things and I did put those things in the video, which kind of made them look silly. But the main purpose of the video is hopefully this kind of constructive criticism, this sort of educational argumentation that helps people understand things just a little bit more clearly in a super positive way. And I made that video not incredibly deliberately that way, because I thought this would be helpful to people who just didn't know all the info. And in some ways I think the suppressor video is actually a better example. There wasn't a really strategic plan for how that thing was gonna change minds. I thought that that video was going to be helpful and informative to people who were already on board with suppressor ownership and so forth and so on. But I've had people come up and tell me that this was the video that made the clearest case for some of these things that their parents or brothers or cousins or coworkers had ever seen and was actually really helpful in some of that kind of constructive, educational argumentation.
Speaker 1:And some of this stuff is gonna be contentious. It may not be possible to have the arguments about the truth without them being somewhat fractious. Boldly but gently, stating the truth is something that is kind of a non-negotiable at this point. As you talk to different people, family or otherwise, about some of the issues that are being discussed in the mainstream media, you're going to have to hang on to some ground. As people have discussed statues and Christian nationalism over the past week, there's been a huge amount of disagreement over what the truth actually is, what the First Amendment actually says. It's exactly the same kind of argumentation that you were probably familiar with when people on the internet discuss the Second Amendment, this conversation about how the founders never intended for people to own military firearms, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. We're seeing the same types of people say the same types of things about how the founders never intended for there to be any Christian expression of anything inside of the government.
Speaker 1:I had somebody tell me that a couple of the founders were deists at best and the rest were atheists. Actually, it's kind of the opposite. The first constitutional convention, all of them were Christians, except possibly for two deists. There were only two deists there. I argue they weren't actually very good deists, because both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin asked for intercessory type of prayers where they're calling for the direct and divine intervention that a deist would scoff at. The historical records are plain, the historical records are clear, but those historical records are kind of being torn down, kind of like that statue, that reconciliation statue in Arlington. It's really important that we hang on to what the truth actually is so we even have the grounds to have some of these constructive conversations.
Speaker 1:There are these really basic tenets of Christianity which have been talked about and sung about at Christmases for centuries that are now being attached to this brand new Christian nationalism label so that they can be marginalized and thrown away. If you listen to some of the classic Christmas carols like Joy to the World, it talks about Christ being a king and ruling over the earth, the earth receiving her king. The words king and nations appear over and over and over again in all the Christmas carols that actually talk about Christ and not just snowmen and jingle bells. So clearly that's yeah, this must be Christian nationalist stuff that we've got to kind of get out of the way. And then I also was talking to somebody about a Spurgeon quote. Spurgeon had a quote that sounded distinctly Christian national-esque, and someone tried to make the point that Spurgeon was not really a Christian pastor. He was just some kind of fringe weirdo that nobody ever heard of until these weird Christian nationalists appeared on Twitter. We're talking about Spurgeon. We're talking about one of the greatest and most famous pastors of an entire century. Not only are the founders being retconned as non-Christians, but some are some of the greatest, most prolific and most widely known pastors of the 19th century.
Speaker 1:This is exactly the kind of ground that Christians need to hang on to, and conservatives need to hang on to some of these things as well. So, homework assignment. Christmas is coming. There's a whole lot that we need to celebrate. There's a whole lot that we need to rejoice in. There's a whole lot of opportunities to encourage the people that we're going to be around this Christmas. We want you to pursue family unity and peace, but you're going to have to do it while standing on something. You're going to have to be gentle and peaceful and unemotional, but at the same time, you can't give up all of the ground that you're standing on in the interests of maintaining that peace. So give this considerable thought. There's a few days until Christmas yet to think through some of these things, figure out how you want to interact with your own family. I wish I could be more specific, but obviously I don't know your specific circumstances. But be deliberate about this time that you have with them, these people that you love and are spending time with and want to have these kind of constructive arguments with if arguments are inevitable.
Speaker 1:Again, that Kyle Rittenhouse interview is, I think, a perfect example of how keeping your cool and stating the truth in a very impassionate way is very helpful. It definitely helped Kyle Rittenhouse as he got his points across and explained why he was selling a book. To get the story straight. That was kind of hilarious that Piers Morgan was down on him for collecting money on the book. I think Piers Morgan has paid pretty well to comment on things and has published some of his own books.
Speaker 1:A lot of the people who were criticizing the Moscow Presbyterians for publishing books also have pretty good book deals with different publishers. So I don't know. I just give a little chuckle at that one. I'm not trying to dunk on anybody, but sometimes people dunk on themselves and I just can't really help but to point it out unemotionally, impassionately, but just enjoying.
Speaker 1:Anyhow, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and I hope that the time that you are able to spend with family is something that is really, really good and encouraging to where any of the arguments and friction that exists is something that is helpful, it actually improves and it actually builds and it actually sharpens and it actually leads everyone involved in that argument in a better place. That's going to require that you stick to your guns and hold your ground, but it's also going to require that you do it with an incredible amount of grace. The good news is that there is no better time for extending grace and taking ground than Christmas. That is the ultimate Christmas tradition, and so your homework assignment is to have a very merry Christmas.