What is a Christian to Think? - Developing a Biblical Worldview - Part 2

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My name is Brian Thomas and I want to thank you for joining me today. As I am delighted to be joined again by a special guest this week, Dr. Bruce Logan, as we are continuing to discuss his series on developing a biblical worldview. So as we continue with the series that you wrote, a friend of yours asked you this question, quote, how does my religious views or my theological perspective impact or influence my political views?

So what was your answer to this friend? Well, in essence, we talked about when we talk about worldview, the fact of the matter is, is that he wanted to make it out of a political question, which is which is kind of what happens in most cases when people want to start talking about these issues. They want to make it about politics. He wanted to make it because actually when that happened, that was the day after the 2016 election where Trump won over Hillary Clinton.

And I was, we were visiting, it was like literally the next day. And, and that's when, when he asked me that question, of course, you know, he was, you know, obviously we had different, even though he's a minister, this friend of mine, you know, have different, a different opinion and outlook on politics from the way that I do. He separates religion and politics. Whereas I don't, I say you have to be able to come look at them as one because it's more, it's not an issue of politics so much as it is a worldview issue, to make a long story short. We're dealing with a worldview issue when it comes to politics, because when you examine, if you just critically think through the issues that we're being taught or told, or that's being talked about or that's being promoted by the media, you can clearly see the connection of a biblical worldview versus a secular worldview. So basically, the first, the first in 2016, just the full disclosure, I was kind of disillusioned by both of the candidates. And because I've always been an issue based person.

I want to compare what issues based on my biblical worldview, because I look at it as a worldview question and not a political issue. But with that said, I was very disillusioned in 2016. And I basically didn't vote for either of them.

I voted for one of the independent candidates, kind of a lack of a protest. But then as time went on, I started to begin, as I started to see, once I got past a lot of the things that make people uncomfortable with Trump, his tweets and some of the remarks. Once you got past that and actually looked at policy initiatives, and then I started saying, okay, and you compare those policy initiatives to the left.

Let's kind of give you an example. Within the first year of the Trump administration, we went in America for the first time, we became energy independent. That means not only were we energy independent, but we became the leading exporter of fossil fuel in the world.

And prior to that, that had never happened before. Prior to that, we had been dependent on OPEC. And so whenever there was, for an example, whenever there was a terrorist attack in one of the OPEC oil fields, then what would often happen to our gas prices? Our gas prices would automatically shoot up.

But under the first couple of years of the Trump administration, there were two separate terrorist attacks in one of Saudi Arabia and one in Iran. And ordinarily, our gas prices would go up. But in this case, instead of our gas prices going up, they either went down or stayed the same. Well, that's because we were no longer dependent upon OPEC as in terms of getting our energy.

And what that has to do with a worldview question is because the secularist has tried to push in the green energy type of situation. As a matter of fact, the energy secretary, I remember you were mentioning to me about how, you know, the gas shortage on the East Coast. Well, yesterday or day before, I don't remember exactly, I was listening to an interview or press conference from the energy secretary. And the energy secretary, I couldn't believe I was hearing this, but she said, well, if everybody was driving electric cars, this wouldn't be a problem. Yeah, I heard that. And I could not believe that was, but see again, a lot of times, you know, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Right. So basically, she was letting them know that there's an agenda and what this agenda is all about.

So, I mean, and so now we've gone, you know, gas prices are going up and so on and so forth. But again, we're talking from a biblical worldview standpoint, it's the issues versus personality and ideology. I mean, I'm sorry, versus personality versus party. So in other words, my friend had asked me that question as a devout Democrat. OK, so he's voting Democrat regardless because, you know, Democrat is often, you know, associate or I'm sorry to the black liberation theologians automatically aligned with the Democrat Party because they associate socialism and social justice under the same umbrella. As a matter of fact, I was in a conversation and an individual made the comment that Jesus would have been a socialist.

Remember, he used the term that you used earlier, he would have been a progressive. And the example that he used, he tried to kind of turn it like the point against me by saying, using the example when Jesus ate with sinners. But see, basically, and I've heard that analogy in that comparison multiple times, but in reality, they were taking the word of God out of context. Because if you read the following verses, when they would ask Jesus, why did you eat with sinners? Jesus explained himself, I do not come to save the righteous, but I come in paraphrasing to deliver the sinners, to bring sinners to repentance. So he was eating with sinners and that was like he was evangelizing. He was not co-signing their sins.

He was not giving them a little encouraging word and everything is going to be fine and you're good and you're awesome. You know what I mean? And that's how God made you. No, he was he was bringing sinners to repentance. Right. So the context of not only do we have to have a biblical worldview, but we also have to have a rightly divided biblical worldview. Amen.

Amen. And that question from your friend and you stated he's a minister and I take that to be a Christian minister. And he stated how he separates his pastor, as a matter of fact. Oh, pastor. OK, so he separates Christianity from politics and that ties into a question I had someone ask me last week. He asked me the question. He said, Brian, how is it that that Christians can can go and vote for people that they know advocate for killing babies in the womb?

How how do they do that? How do they reconcile that? And so I want to ask you the question, what do you believe is the reason? I know you can't think for all of these people, but again, for those who can go into churches and say and preach one thing, but then they go out politically and support the opposite, which is the opposite of the Bible. And for those who go sit in the pews and they say amens to everything that the Bible says, but then they go and vote to the contrary. How do you think they are reconciling that?

How do they justify separating their their biblical stance from their religious stance? Well, I'm going to talk a little bit more of that and, you know, further on in the interview. But just because, you know, we're going to talk about the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of man and the law of unintended consequences. But before we get to that and then we're talking about the need for discernment. And so I'll just touch on it now, but I'm going to expand upon it a little bit more later.

But the fact of the matter is, is that we have a systemic lack of discernment in the Christian church. I just looked. I saw a study here just earlier this week. Were you familiar with George Barna, the Christian researcher?

Yes. But Barna did a study and he said that only 19 percent. Of Christians are church going, Christians have a genuine biblical worldview. So, in other words, the idea, a matter of fact, I will just jump to that. The fact of the matter is, is that one of the, and this is my opinion, my estimation, is that the biggest problem that we have in America is not race, but a systemic lack of discernment among belief.

And that's a firm belief of mine. And basically, where does that lack of discernment come from? That lack of discernment is a result of a complete distancing from anything that even resembles good expository preaching and teaching. For an example, I don't even know if the last time, I don't even know, even if I've ever heard, you know, like a pastor do an expository, you know, 8, 10, 12 week sermon or series on verse by verse of the book of Romans. For example, expository exegeting the book of Romans or the book of Hebrews. And don't even think about the book of Revelation or the book of Daniel.

They avoid those like the coronavirus. And I'm saying when you, but when you, here's the thing, when you avoid, you know, Bible prophecy especially, you're actually eliminating nearly almost two thirds of the entire Bible. Yes, exactly. And so much that is going on in the world today is in Bible prophecy. But for those who are not looking at Bible prophecy, they're not seeing these things through a biblical worldview. Their perspective on it is all out of whack.

So again, when you, that kind of ties into what, you know, to what you asked of how so many Christians able to hear and vote Democrat in spite of, you know, the drag queen story hours that's going on. You know, we had a president that just, during one of the debates, he talked about, he's an advocate for eight year olds having a taxpayer paid gender reassignment surgery for eight year olds. You know, if my eight year old son came to me and says, you know, dad, I think I'm a girl, I want to go have gender reassignment surgery.

I'm going to go get him a football and a helmet, say, boy, go out here and let's go play some catch. Right, right. Eight. Okay.

You can't. And so, and that was interesting because I think it was Ron Paul was during the confirmation hearing for the new health secretary, the bisexual or whatever they call themselves, health secretary. And that's ironic in and of itself. Okay. Your first, your first appointment is a bisexual health secretary. Let that sink in.

Okay. And I think it was Rand Paul that was grilling him, whatever, during the confirmation hearing and, you know, asking him, you know, about his belief to give a gender reassignment procedures to eight year olds. And not only did he didn't deny it, he doubled down and, and, and gave affirmation to it even more. And, and somehow or another, he still got confirmed.

So that's kind of let you know that the spirit of the age is really bad. And, and it, but it couldn't have happened because a large percentage of the Christian community actually voted for that. In spite of the fact that he, he lets you know exactly what he was going to do. He lets you know the gas prices was going to go up.

He didn't, wasn't even trying to make a secret out of it because he was going to shut down, you know, various pipelines, put, put the energy workers out of, out of jobs on top of the, you know, 30 million plus jobs that were lost because of COVID. And so there's a, you know, when there's a systemic lack of discernment, it's very problematic when, when the world is telling you what they're going to do. And, and you know, you still vote for it anyway, because it used to be a time where they would, they wouldn't just come right out and just tell you point blank, this is what we're going to do. They would, they would tell you, they would, they was planning on doing it. They would plan to do it, but they wouldn't just come right out. And so, because the culture and particularly the Christian church has become so desensitized that, you know, that we have, we completely lack any type of discernment or critical thinking in order to be able to determine and see and understand what's going on.

Yeah. And as you were talking about that, what came to mind for me, I mentioned this in a previous show, the evangelicals for Biden group and how they were all upset because when it came to the hot amendment, Biden did not make the changes that they were hoping for. And the question that I was asking myself is Biden ran throughout the campaign, stating his position when it came to abortion. So, so now why are you upset over the fact that he's not changing his stance?

He's doing what he said he was going to do, but that's where, as you said, the lack of discernment comes in. And it just shows that, that, that lack of discernment is getting worse as time goes forward, because it used to be a matter of where you had to maybe dig a little bit to do some research, but the Holy Spirit would guide you as to where to go to, to figure out what is really going on. But now, as you said, they're just right out in the open with it and still people are falling forward and not having the proper discernment. So it is a, it is a major, major problem now in, in churches. It's, it's, it's a, I call it because you know, the world likes using that world system, using the world systemic.

They like throwing that, they love throwing that word around. Most of the time it's referring to, you know, systemic racism, you know, and, but there's a systemic lack of understanding, a systemic lack of discernment in the church and a systemic level of biblical illiteracy in the church. Yeah. And so you, you touched on it a minute ago. You, you stated about the law of unintended consequences. So this lack of discernment has consequences. So, so what is the law of unintended consequences?

Okay. That's a very good question because when we talk about the law and that, and again, every one of these topics can be a show by itself. The law of unintended consequences, basically it's a, it's a frequently observed phenomenon.

Mostly you observe it in politics, but actually you can observe it in your, in your personal life. For example, if you, if you, you know, you eat a diet of, you know, McDonald's, you know, your whole life, there's going to be unintended consequences to that. You know, you're not going, you're going, you're going to have an unhealthy immune system. You're going to be overweight. You're going to have blood pressure.

You're going to have all kinds of issues. But culturally speaking, the law of unintended consequences is just basically means that action and particularly of governments have an effect that are oftentimes unanticipated or unintended. For example, one of the examples I like to use, of course, we can talk about the past year in COVID with the consequences of 90, I'm sorry, 30 to 40 million new unemployment claims in less than a year. I saw a statistic yesterday and basically that's based upon that all happened because of the consequence of the mitigation efforts by the government, the mitigation mandates, you know, shutdowns and lockdowns. That was a mitigation mandate that came from the government and from not only the federal, but also various state governments. And those mandates had unintended consequences.

In the state of Michigan, I heard this yesterday that 19% of all the jobs that were, I mean, businesses that closed will never come back. So basically it kind of like, if you think of it like this, let's say you had like a fist on your leg and you want to have it diagnosed and a doctor diagnosed and said, well, you have cancer. We see it's cancerous and our solution would be that we just immediately amputate your leg. Now, what would the average person do, you know, in that kind of scenario? You wouldn't just say, okay, just cut it off like right then and there, right? You wouldn't do that. You would say, oh, you would want to go get a second opinion.

You would want to try to see if there's other treatment options that you can, you know, try. In other words, the last resort is going to be amputation. What we did in the culture is that we just went along with what the government said. They said, okay, we want to lock the country down, put everybody out of work, give everybody free money, and then give everybody more free money on unemployment and wonder why we can't get people to go back to work. Exactly. Exactly. When you give people more money to sit at home, then they would make actually working and then you can't get people to go back to work.

And you wonder why that is. Yeah. And now you have all these restaurants that the owners are saying, hey, we're reopened.

We want to get back going, but we can't find people to take the jobs because they're saying they'd rather stay home and make the money that the government is giving them. Exactly. Then the president was asked about that earlier in the week and he said his quote was, not even close. That's fake news. That's not even close to truth.

When everybody knows and you can just see that it's true. I mean, everywhere, I just come back from Tennessee and visiting, I would stay in Tennessee for a week in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And it's, I want to say about 30 miles from Nashville. And there was help, wanted signs like everywhere you turn. I mean, just literally everywhere. And, you know, restaurants were closing early because they can't get people to work overtime.

And it was just, it was really bad. They can't get people to work because they were getting more from staying at home. So that's an example of an unintended consequence. But then there are broader examples.

One of the examples I like to use is going back into the 1960s when LBJ launched a program called the Great Society and they termed it the War on Poverty. Well, even though it's possible that they may have had well-meaning intent or intentions, the consequence of that War on Poverty or the Great Society was it had an acceleration of fatherlessness in America. And the black community in particular, there were prior to the early 60s that the African American illegitimacy rate was only 14%. In other words, that's only 14% of young African Americans were raised by a single family.

Fast forward to today, it's over 70%. Okay. So that's a serious unintended consequence because what happened is that you raise a generation of people who become dependent on the government where the male role was kind of marginalized. So in other words, we don't really need a man. We don't need a husband, don't need a father in a home because Uncle Sam can be your father.

Okay. I remember, and I don't know if you saw this, and you can still Google it on YouTube, early in Barack Obama's first term, he launched a program or he tried to initiate a program called, and he referred to it as the, what was it called, the Law of Julia. Or the Life of Julia.

Did you ever hear about that? I did not. It was called the Life of Julia. In other words, it was an advertisement that actually made a cartoon out of it.

Okay. And basically it took a person named Julia, the young girl who was born, and every step of their life, all the way to death, from childhood to high school to daycare to high school to college to retirement was all going to be funded by the government. And the thing that stood out is that there was never any mention of a father.

It was just Julia and a mother and no mention of the father because the government was going to be the father. Wow. Again, when you talk about the law of unintended consequences is that as a believer, when we go through the voting process, we have a tendency to want to be personality driven or party driven instead of being worldview driven. And I guess that would be the most important thing that I could say out of this conversation that we're having is that having a biblical worldview in our politics and even in our churches, getting back into in-depth theological teaching, teaching the basics of the book of Romans. And again, teaching Bible prophecy, teaching just in-depth exegesis of the scripture is going to have to be paramount to getting our culture back.

Yeah. Well said. And I want to say too, as you were talking what came to mind and folks, please know we're not trying to make this a political show, but as you stated earlier, Dr. Logan, you can't separate your faith in God from anything. And so it intersects with every area of life, even in politics.

And as I think about what you mentioned back in the 1960s, the welfare programs and giving money, but the requirement was that the father could not be in the home. And there have been just so many consequences, again, unintended consequences that have came out of that. And I think one of the things that we see today, the problems that we see with this rhetoric of police that are supposedly hunting down blacks, which is not true. But what we find is that there is this lack of respect for authority, because when you look at these cases in just about every single one of them, either a crime has been committed and or they're resisting arrest. And the media doesn't like to focus on that for whatever reason.

But you see that happening. And I think about the years, the decades that have gone by in which fathers are not in the home. And so you have all of these young men growing up and they don't have a respect for authority. Oftentimes the mother is bitter about their father not being president. So she's constantly speaking negativity towards their father. So they grow up with this this anger towards authority figures. And we see that taking place.

I think that is definitely an unintended consequence of what happened many decades ago. Well, Dr. Logan, these again, you've given us so much wisdom and so much discernment. I want to thank you for for one for for writing this series and then for coming on to speak with our listeners about it. Share with our listeners how they can can find the series and how they can get in contact with you to learn more about you and your ministry. OK, you can follow the series on my Web site at the Dr. Bruce Logan dot com Dr. Bruce Logan dot com. And you can follow me on Facebook at DBL Ministries at DBL Ministries. Or you can just Google Facebook, Dr. Bruce Logan Ministries, and I'll pop up. You can also tweet me at Dr. Bruce Logan one that at Dr. Bruce Logan one. And then you can also e-mail me at B.R. to Logan at AOL dot com.

That's B.R. the number two Logan at AOL dot com. And you can also follow me on me.

We and parlor go to parlor app or me. We have been search Bruce Logan and then I'll I'll pop up. All right. Well, folks, if you've never followed him before, I encourage you to reach out to Dr. Logan, because if you are looking for answers to questions in the Bible, again, he has a wealth of information. You will definitely not be disappointed. So please visit him. And Dr. Logan, again, I want to thank you for coming on. And I pray many blessings over you and your ministry. Thank you. God bless.

All right. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in again with us this week. Please come back next week as we again encourage you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel until the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. Thank you for tuning in to the God first program. Please come back and join us next week as we continue to encourage you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Until next time, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel and seek first the kingdom of God.