Shownotes Transcript
The link between the gender insanity is a direct consequence of our spirit of legion, of empire. Right. You can't go along with all this war and atrocity without it having an effect on your society's mental sanity. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
So we're back for another Things Hidden podcast. I'm David Gronowski here with Sir Atnis Gupta, editor at A Neighbor's Choice.com. And we're going to cover the topic of war and peace and the significance of how the biblical anthropology that we pull from in this podcast has an effect on the way in which we think about matters of war and peace.
One of the things that I think is
most disappointing always is that it tends to be so many religious folks that are really big on war. I wouldn't say that they're the biggest group of people pining for war, but they tend to be the ones most excited about good old time traditional violence to solve problems. They like violence to solve, you know, people who are addicted to drugs. They like violence to solve disobedience from children. They
They like violence to solve fear of some other tribe or other religion around the world that the television tells them to hate.
and they're the first dupes to be used for conflicts and wars. And oftentimes it's very easy to dunk on the Zionist types, Christian Zionist types, but the impulse for aggression and war unfortunately cuts through a whole host of different traditions, especially those so-called traditionalists that like to
to see Christianity as a backwards religion rather than a forward religion. They don't like to have any kind of concept of progress. Any kind of concept of progress they erroneously attribute to notions of modernism or liberalism or other ideologies which are actually just aping Christianity in its progressive vision.
But of course, you know, the lack of nuance is not something that seems to be of concern to these folks. But let's talk about the Iran article. I published this
This week at the American Conservative. Did you get a chance to check it out? Any thoughts on it? Yes. Yes, I did. I like the way that most people, when they're arguing for violence and all of that, they're arguing for, they say that violence has always been the solution or something like that. They always tend to bring out the examples from history where violence has presumably solved any problems. But I like the fact that
that your article is pointing to examples like Vietnam, like how negotiating and having trade, open trade and all of that with Vietnam, like these examples of peace, how they have worked as well. So I think we need more articles like that. I think we need more examples like those to remind people
that peace has worked far more times than violence has. It's just that we tend to ignore them, these examples. Your article talks about having trade with Vietnam, but yet we hardly see anyone mentioning how having trade with Vietnam after the Vietnam War
has improved relations between the United States and Vietnam and benefited both countries enormously. Yeah, I had someone, I posted out, I posted a picture of a young girl in Gaza who is not looking very good. Her name is Rehaf Ayad, and she's got an unknown illness that's left her unable to walk and her hair falls out.
And she's got no medical ability to get help because of the Israeli blockade over Gaza. And I said, Christ does not bless this evil. And I had somebody, I guess, well, you know, I think he's a well-meaning person. I know he's a well-meaning person and most of my exchanges with him, but he wanted to reach out to me to let me know, hey, why are you saying Christ does not bless this kind of evil? You know, if Christ came back,
he'd send her to hell anyways because she's of a different, I guess he's assuming that she's of a different faith. But I think that mindset is so, you know, it was so casually said, you know, just casually thrown out there by an otherwise really nice and kind person. And I think there's just something mentally ill about that kind of religion. I don't care what people call it. It's a psychopathic religion. If people think that
Like the whole point of Jesus is that he's this neurotic guy who, you know, wants to like put a little girl who's already living hell on earth. And he's like, you know, I'm the creator of all things. And I died on this cross and I tried to do things to change the world. But this little girl, after she's done miserably starving to death her whole life and sick, I'm going to torture her forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever on and on.
The only way you can mentally take that seriously is if you're batshit insane. Okay, I don't care. I don't care what you want to say. You're a batshit insane person if you think that is the purpose of good news. I mean, that's the most terrifying, sadistic, insane view of reality that I could ever imagine. And no wonder so many people have left the faith in various ways.
Because that's the presentation that they hear about Jesus. You know, Jesus is something for traditionalist types like that, that Jesus is a is a object that you attain to get a certain status into the church or into salvation. You know, whatever your doctrines are that you're conceiving of. Jesus gets you a certain status. He gets you into an afterlife status. He gets you into being right.
status. He gets you into being orthodox status. He gets you into the correct position by consuming him. Now, there's different ways people consume him. Some people consume him by a mental assent about facts about his life, and some people consume him by baptismal ritual. Some people consume him by the Eucharist.
But whichever way they consume and devour this object that they call Jesus, they don't want to have anything to do with Jesus himself. He's an object. He is God's liberal son that you eat in order to feel better about yourself. Is that the way you hear it? That's what I hear. No wonder people have rejected that. I mean, because it's a perversion of everything you can even think of when encountering Christ. Right. I mean, yeah, I...
Just been thinking of what was said to you about that child being sent to hell by Jesus. It obviously shows a lack of understanding of Jesus' character and very significant examples given in the Gospels that display Jesus' attitude towards children.
And Jesus was very brutal towards anybody, those who would harm children. He said, it would be better if a millstone hung from your neck and you sank, rather than harm any of these little ones. And he said, don't be a stumbling block.
for children to come towards me, permit these children. And he said that we have to be like children as well. So it's very obvious that Jesus regarded children as like peak of humanity. He says this, we never see him make these kinds of assessment
towards any other like he always has bad things to say about others but he always has positive things to say about children and to come from that and say that Jesus would send that kid to hell makes absolutely no sense whatsoever there's literally no precedent for that no standard for saying that so
Yeah, and it just reveals like, it's not, to your point, David, it's not just, it just reveals that it's not just Zionism, it's having a sacrificial violent version of Jesus, you know, having, and it also shows in various ways, you know, when we partake of the Eucharist, and when we do all of these other things.
oftentimes yeah christian zionism is a scapegoat for a lot of other violence it's a symptom and it's a scapegoat right it's a symptom and it's a scapegoat and you don't uh go after the symptom you go after the root cause what is causing this so there are like uh other versions of the symptom you can call it extreme nationalism you can call it whatever it is you know and uh the sacrificial uh version of jesus uh
It means like treating Jesus as an object, treating Jesus as a get out of jail card. Like if you have Jesus, if you take the Eucharist, you get out of jail kind of mentality. That's totally missing the point of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is meant to transform you, not just stop you at the level of...
washing away your sins. It's meant to make you more like Jesus. I forgot the name of the philosopher. He said Alexander Schmemann mentions him in the book about Eucharist. He says, you are what you eat.
And if we are not becoming like Jesus, when we consume Jesus, you know, and this can be whether, you know, if you take literally it is the body of God or if you take it as a symbolic way, whatever it is, it applies both ways. If you are not becoming like Jesus, when you're partaking of the communion, then what's the point? You know, because
you forgiveness of sins is already there it's already gift of the grace of god but if you're making it into some kind of like uh you know unnecessary over complicating uh the process and not even transforming yourself in the process not even not even doing your part of the bargain which is
yeah like if god is giving me a gift but i should also do something in return and that what i should do is working towards you know transformation because god alone will not transform you you will have to uh work synergistically with god to make that happen and uh
When people make an object out of Jesus, when people worship this sacrificial, violent Jesus, it just betrays a lack of effort, right? It just shows how that people are not willing to work towards that transformation.
Yeah, I don't know. You know, they put a lot of effort into a lot of ritual and vanity. You know, I don't know if they they'll put effort into stuff. They just don't want to. They don't like Jesus. You know, I think that a lot of Christians don't like Jesus. They like Jesus as something to eat. You know, you're not friends with your if you go to the restaurant, you eat shrimp. You're not becoming best friends with the shrimp. You eat them. OK, when you eat when you eat mutton, are you friends with the lamb that you ate the mutton from or do you eat it?
What do you do? When you eat mutton fresh from a lamb, do you make friends with the lamb before you eat it? Or you just eat it? No, I don't. I eat it. Okay, so you eat it, right? You don't try to become more like the lamb as you eat it? Nope. Do you become a little bit more sheepy after you eat mutton? No. How about when you eat fish? Do you start to swim around a lot more?
You don't hold your breath longer under the water when you go to the swimming pool after you eat a meal of fish? No. So that's what it's like to be a lot of folks that eat the Lord's Supper. So they don't actually, they eat Jesus as an object. And I mean eat as in, again, not just the Lord's Supper, but also just the whole process of what they identify as a Christian.
It's really not about becoming like Christ at all. It's about feeling the feeling of catharsis that one gets when one realizes that they feel clean. Now, you know, being clean in relationship to your status prior to taking up the ritual of the Lord's Supper or baptism or other rituals that we associate with the church, all these things, you know, they...
They don't work. I guess people think they don't work in the sense of becoming more nonviolent like Christ is. They're becoming more oriented towards peace and justice and creativity like Christ is. They don't like that stuff. People do not like that stuff. If you think that little kids who are suffering on earth are going to be roasted alive forever by Jesus, you don't like Jesus. Jesus' personality does not look like that.
Now you can point to all the times he mentions Gehenna all the time talking about 70 AD and the destruction of Jerusalem. But that doesn't change the fact that, you know, Jesus's personality is clearly not the kind of person that likes to talk about, hey, you know, people who don't like me or don't know about me. I'm going to burn them alive forever. I want to torture them. You know, it is horrendous to be in suffering.
and to be suffering forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Why? Because when you're a human being for your meager few years on earth, you are suffering and suffering and suffering, and you just happen to be born in an area where you didn't hear about that stuff. But yet people who are born in areas that hear about Christianity, then they go and justify doing wars?
whether it's Serbia or wars in Russia, Ukraine. Look at all the people. They had, you know, there's more Christians in Russia and Ukraine than there are proportionally in the Gaza neighborhood, you know. But, you know, look at what the Russians and Ukrainians do. A million of their people dead. You know, they go to church. They're still killing people. So what's the Eucharist not taking over there? I thought they believe it's the real presence of Christ. Why does it not make them more nonviolent? And how about all the other places? You know, Americans...
go to church more than almost any other group proportionally, and yet they're always being sent off to wars and they buy into the propaganda, always duped in by another globalist excuse for another war. Of course, our appetite is quickly diminishing towards this kind of violence. But that's what I wanted to point out in my article. And for those who are not familiar with it, we should give the title before we talked about it, Iran, Vietnam, and Trump's Chance for Peace.
This is published on the American conservative dot com. You can check it out. And I wanted to mention the point that Ron Paul used to always say about how we went over to Vietnam. We lost over 58000 of our people and they lost millions of theirs. And we did not achieve the mission of getting rid of communism.
But afterwards, we started to trade and travel and dialogue with them. And now we're much closer to what we would call peace and lack of vicious communism than through trade and dialogue than we ever accomplished through bombing them. So we can trade and dialogue and get along with people and become friends through those
connections that we make much more effective at pushing back authoritarian communism than bombing somebody out of their communism. And so he talked about that. And so I kind of use that as the explanation because we just had the Vietnam anniversary last week. And here we are at the precipice of an Iran deal. Hopefully Trump has announced that he has suspended violence against the Houthis.
And, uh, I don't know how long that'll last, but we can only hope that that will be the beginning. He said he's got a big, big deal. He wants to announce or a big, big announcement he wants to have before he goes off to the middle East this week. And I can only hope that it's something to do with peace with Russia or peace with Iran or both would be great. Um, but, uh,
you know, that bloodlust, you know, continues to run rampant in the minds of a lot of people. For conservatives, they tend to be more, and they're less and less so, but they tend to be more suckered into bloodlust against Palestinians and Iran. For liberals, they're more bloodlust about Russia,
You know, they want that to continue, which is sad. You know, these people read these nonviolent Christian liberal progressive books. You think, OK, maybe that'll help you be less violent. And then they go off and we can't stop the war with Russia. If Trump wants to have peace with Russia, he has to be an agent of another government. And then they go back to Sunday and they read about nonviolence and self-emptying and
You know, it's insane how that works. And then they get siloed. Their brain is psyoped into that tunnel vision of Russia must be destroyed. Anybody who wants peace with Russia wants to destroy us. And then they can think clearly when it comes to Iran because the Iran propaganda hasn't been designed for them. So they can look at that clearly and say, oh, that's obviously propaganda. We don't need to be in war with Iran. That's what the Fox News nuts want.
The Fox News nuts people, they're more wise to the Russia bloodlust propaganda.
but they don't understand what's been done unto them. I think more and more are, though. That's why as much as I'm tough with those on the conservative and the right-wing space, you can still see, like, human growth. Pretty remarkable. You can still see some of it happening. It's not up to my speed. I mean, I've been writing against Iran war propaganda since I was 17 years old, you know, and they still haven't gone to war with Iran yet.
But I have been trying to fight against the Republican Party's BS war propaganda for Iran since I was 17 years old. And it still keeps rearing its ugly head. But the article that I wrote is basically saying that if we could have a trade deal with Iran, like what Trump likes to do, that would be much more effective at stopping any kind of terrorism or violence that we're concerned about popping off over there.
because, you know, those folks in Iran are very sophisticated culture. They have a lot of interest in engineering. To be an engineer in Iran is like being a doctor or a lawyer in America. That's a sign of high prestige. And to be told that you can never have civilian nuclear energy because Israel, who stole our nukes and all that, you know, they get to tell you what happens over there like
I mean, to me, it's just very insane. But they seem to be open to having a deal. They were open to having a deal in the 90s with Clinton that didn't that got squashed. They were open to working together with George W. Bush after 9-11. They had more protests and solidarity of America after 9-11 than any other country in the Middle East. And, you know,
And yet we've you know, we've just been told that they're just ready to kill us at any minute pretty pretty insane What what humans will believe? But the but the population of Iran is young. It's tech savvy Over 50% is under the age of 35 they don't want and the only thing that will stop that as if you know, we we start bombing and killing their innocent people if we start bombing and killing civilians and
it will enable their regime to have power for much longer, like we've already been doing for a long time. We were told when I was a child that Ahmadinejad was going to blow up the whole world. He was looking for the imam in the well. And now he's like a librarian who does sports broadcasting. He's the equivalent of Pat McAfee in Iran, you know?
This guy was supposed to be the guy who was going to blow up the whole world with suitcase nukes in every city. Turned out to be Pat McAfee with glasses and a beard. Yeah, like too much. The people who often talk about that
most often they don't know what they're talking about when they talk about Iran. They can't differentiate Iran from other Islamic countries like, say, Saudi Arabia or like the United Arab Emirates because Iran is predominantly Shia and it's run by a Shia theocracy, right? And Shias and Sunnis are like
totally, you know, they totally dislike each other because of centuries long some, you know, we can't, we don't have to get into that, but there are historical reasons and religious reasons. And people often say, oh, yeah, Iran is like a totally crazed Islamic fundamentalist country, but they don't know, like, just by the statement, they don't know what they're talking about because in Iran,
The women are far more freer, they have far more freedoms than they have in countries like Saudi Arabia, who is seen as a vital ally of the United States.
So, you know, like in Saudi Arabia, traditionally Sunni dominant countries, Sunni Islamic countries, yes, women have to be covered from head to toe. But in Iran, women have so many freedoms and they don't have to cover themselves from head to toe. They can leave their faces uncovered. They just have to cover their heads, kind of like how women cover their heads when they go to churches like Wales.
So this is literally like they're just talking out of sheer ignorance. They're probably imagining, they're probably projecting Saudi Arabia onto Iran.
And on top of that, Iranians generally do not hate the American people. They hate the American government, which they see as not serving in the interest of the American people. You see many Iranians, whenever you go onto the internet and watch them being interviewed,
You know, they will emphasize this many times, but Western media, Western mainstream media does not want to pick up those. And instead they pick up what the Iranians chanting, you know, debt to America or something like that. Right. Which is actually which can be disputed, which is not.
which is probably not a literal translation of what they're actually saying. They're probably saying something akin to debt to American foreign policy or debt to American aggression, something like that.
So this just people often are speaking out of the indoctrination and they're talking about Iran. They use the same words that use to translate death to when one of their Iranian guys was running a campaign and was talking about giving people free potatoes. They said death to potato. So that just shows you an example of how that word is used. OK, and they don't mean it in a way that is what we would translate it. But yeah, you're right. You're right.
Anxious betrays like a lack of knowledge in that region. So I don't think it's a bad idea to engage, to go to war with the country.
that you don't know anything about and you know it's a lot of for a lot of the neocons who are pushing for this war they are they don't know anything about Iran either so they're people often like to say these neocons are very intelligent or they're very like super villainy or whatever but the reality is they're often very dumb
They are often very incompetent, you know, and that's why they still haven't been able to, you know, violently overtake Iran. It's probably because they have failed to do so. They've looked for countless ways to do it, but they've failed so far.
And I'm not saying that I like the Iranian theocracy form of government. It's still sacrificial. It serves a sacrificial God. It has its scapegoats as well. But the problem is that, you know, I have to be, you really have to have a, have a deeper anthropological understanding of what Jesus preached to really know the truth. And truth is,
that Iran is not an existential threat to the United States. It's not and therefore it doesn't make sense to scapegoat Iran. It literally doesn't make sense to scapegoat Iran. I mean, of course, if you want to spend, if you want to give millions of dollars to this military industrial complex corporations and these
corrupt politicians and that makes sense. But it is not in America's interest at all. It doesn't serve any interest of the American people. Their lives will not be better by doing it. There's a Guardian story saying Trump plans to announce U.S. will call Persian Gulf Arabian Gulf, officials say. And this is probably some of his hawks or something are pushing for this.
He plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Arabia.
Isn't there like an Arabian Sea already? That's a nice reward for the 9-11 attacks, isn't it? Iran comes out and says, hey, we are in solidarity with you. We're willing to help you fight Al-Qaeda. The United States government, too busy arming Al-Qaeda in places like Syria and Libya and everywhere else, said no thanks.
Uh, meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and others are probably have a large role and, um, and what happened with nine 11 and yet they get as a gift, Hey, we're going to call your place there. You know, that you're that golf, we're going to call that the Arabian Gulf in honor of what you did for nine 11. That's a big tough guy moved by Donald Trump there. But, you know, at the same time, maybe he's just, you know, negotiating, uh, you know, by trying to thumb there, you know, maybe he's giving toe, you know, you can always try to look for a positive, uh,
silver linings that maybe he's just using that to kind of give a token fodder to yeah hardliner right wingers right like throwing them bones so yeah to give space for him to try to make peace so who knows what who knows what donnie is thinking but uh you know a lot of people you know will say oh you you need to you need to let him do his thing he's pretending all this stuff and i tell you what
Well, maybe, you know, I'm not playing that game, you know, because I'm an American, okay? Americans, our country has a right to call out our elected officials because our system, at least its tradition, is that they work for us. And it's clear that I have a right as an American to demand certain expectations of my employees if they're supposed to be representing them. And so that includes the President of the United States. He's not a king. He's not a dictator. He doesn't own America.
If he's elected to serve, it is to serve. And I have every right as a citizen, sovereign citizen of the United States of America to say very clearly what I don't like and what I do like. And if they want to say, oh, he's playing games, you just got to let him do it or else you're not. Well, I'm like, okay, well, if he's playing games, I can play games too. You know? So if he's pretending to be a hawk, well, I'll pretend to be whooping his ass as a hawk. Okay. And then when he doesn't go to war, we'll be all happy. Won't we? Right. You see what I mean? That's the way I see it. See what I'm trying to say?
You know, if I'm going to sit there and play the role of a sycophant, who the hell wants to be that? That's not an American. You know, whatever he wants. Oh, it's all a game. He's not really a war hawk. It's all just a pretend. You've got to just go along with it. What's the point of being an American if you can't criticize your government?
I don't know what these people come from with these ideas, but you get that with some of the MAGA people. To be fair, the MAGA, again, still has a robust debate. Did the Democrats, besides the Gaza thing, did the Democrats ever really have any open debate under Biden? No. It was a lockstep. Yeah, lockstep bore. So at least with MAGA, you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey and others who are able to criticize MAGA
are warmongering foreign policy openly, and there's a large discussion and debate, at least to some degree, you know. But with the Democrats, there's none of that. It's all kind of unison, you know. So, you know, let's hope that, you know, that there will be peace, lasting peace, and that there won't be this continual, you know, there's this announcement from, this announcement from,
Netanyahu that he wants to completely conquer Gaza. So that shows that the hostages were always an excuse to accomplish something, to remove and displace millions of people. And again, you know, I can't help but remind people the United States government and Israel's government has had a long history documented by Israeli media of funding, equipping, training, and promoting Hamas.
The last known election that Gaza had was in 2007. 50% of the population, which is under the age of 18, had no role in that election. So I always ask these people, including people that want everybody to die and go to hell or whatever, always ask people a basic question. If someone has committed an atrocity,
Who do you hold accountable? The people who have been funding them since the 80s deliberately, equipping them, training them, supporting them, looking the other way on October 7th, probably. Or the children who happen to be living in the place that those people have been in power. Wait a second. This is so insane that anybody can even have a debate about it. And then you got the clowns like Douglas Murray and all these folks running around saying,
Anybody who criticizes their right to murder anybody is a criminal or a horrible person. You see bills being passed to try to make it a crime to criticize any of this type of policy. And you can, you know, people have to realize this is not compatible with America. You cannot keep these kind of policies floating and have any kind of American republic left, any kind of constitutional republic left.
It is decidedly anti-American. It is interventionism, like Ron Paul says. Nothing is as un-American as going out and fighting someone else's wars. It's literally like the opposite of what the founding fathers had in mind. John Quincy Adams said that we don't go out in search of monsters. Yeah, but it's even against America when you talk about trying to criminalize criticism of them.
Yeah. That's third world behavior. Okay. These people try to act like they're the people who can dictate to us what we can say. Well, you're a bunch of third world losers. If you're going to keep saying that we don't have the right to speak and criticize who the hell do these people, this is the, this is supposed to be the Vanguard of American and Western values. I mean, Mark Levin is the Vanguard of Western values. He's over there promoting this bill that thankfully has been pulled back.
but trying to criminalize criticism of war? This is not, that's not a West. That's not the West. That's not what the West is about. That's an attack on the West.
Yeah, it's a centralization of power. It's unchecked authoritarianism. I mean, Douglas Murray, you know, like when he says that says anti-American with who was it, Sam Harris or somebody? I forgot. They all like this sound so much alike. It's very hard to differentiate one from another. They say it's anti-American to be libertarian and criticize, you know, like...
interventionism or whatever. But they track a lot, all of these people like Douglas Murray, they have a very disastrous track record. They stood up for the Iraq war, they stood up for the Afghanistan war and they have been proven wrong again and again. Their stances, their positions have been proven wrong again and again. So if I should listen to your advice, I have to see whether your advice has worked out in the past.
And it hasn't worked out in the past. So why should any American listen to you? You know, so people like Douglas Murray can come in and tell the American people what to do. So it's totally arrogant, you know, and thinking that taking advantage of the generosity of the American people is how I would put it, because America has given people like Douglas Murray and all of these
you know, un-American people, platforms, they think they can do whatever they want. They think they can say to Americans whatever they want. Yeah. There's some Bible passages that I pulled up to read to remind people of the broad theme of justice for the downtrodden and political nonviolence and peace. We have Mary's Magnificat in Luke chapter 1, verse 46-47.
particularly noting 52 to 53. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty. My question for you is that little girl starving and the blockade, which does she fit? Is she this is Mary, the mother of Jesus, right? Here we go. She's saying and talking about the arrival of her son.
that God has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. Does that little girl who's starving in Gaza, is she the ruler on the throne or is she the humble? Um, obviously the humble, uh, she is. That's newsflash for millions of Christians. That's amazing, isn't it? It's filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty. So does that little girl who's starving and she's just bones barely has any, uh,
human like vitality left in her. Is she represent the hungry that have been filled with good things? Or is she the rich that has been sent away empty? The hungry. Oh, okay. Isaiah. Let's go to Isaiah chapter. She's literally hungry, bro. Isaiah chapter 61. That's news to them. Isaiah chapter 61, one through two. The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
Is that girl representative of the poor or is she of the rich? The poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. Is that little girl in Gaza, is she brokenhearted? Yes, absolutely. To proclaim freedom for the captives. Is she in captivity? Yes, she is captive. In peace from darkness for the prisoners. Is she in darkness as a prisoner? Yes, yes. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Is the Lord's favor upon that girl?
Yes. Okay. Micah 6, 8. He has shown you, O mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God? Does starving Gazan children who did not vote for the Hamas who were installed by the United States government in Israel, does starving the poor, is that acting justly and showing mercy and walking humble?
No, not at all. And even if she did vote for Hamas, there is absolutely no justification. I know. I'm trying to give the psychopaths some of that. I'm trying to help. Yeah. Yeah. Got to give them something. Newsflash, don't ask me about children starving being a problem. If you've got a problem next time, you're going to get a whole podcast like this on you. Here, being nice about names. Psalms 82.
Verse three through four, defend the weak and the fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked. OK, so again, there's that little girl. Let's put an image of her up. There's that little girl. Does she represent the week that we should defend? Yes. Yes.
And that includes everybody. We're not trying to say that no other nation. No, all these people defend the weak. We are supposed to defend the weak and the poor and marginalized no matter who they are. And that's the problem, man, is that people do not believe in the revelation of Jesus Christ because if they did, if they were taught that on Sunday...
then they would understand that the era of ethno-nationalism was defeated when the 70 AD destroyed the temple and Jesus' temple was raised three days when he was killed. That was the vindication of the temple of human personhood that is universal versus the temple of ethno-nationalism, which was condemned and defeated.
They don't even teach that in Sunday school. They don't teach. I don't care what your little ortho or your little trad bro or anybody. You tell me, you show me right now where they're learned that today and how that's common knowledge. And then I will recant what I've said right now that my statement is that people were not taught this much, much in much churches. I'd like to see,
Some clear examples. I know that there are people in traditions that say good things like this, but I have never heard of clear examples of churches teaching the clear, obvious teaching that when the temple is destroyed, that is God's condemnation on ethno-nationalism and tribal conceptions of goodness, including my people was better than your people. My people deserve justice more than your people.
Your people are deserving of collateral damage killings more than my people. That's all wrapped up in the concept of the temple being a nationalist framework, or whether you don't like those words, nationalism and stuff have some other meanings in modern context. But I mean that in the sense of a collective tribal identity, having a certain standing with God that is different from other people because of their ethnos.
That's totally destroyed because God does not raise up that temple. Okay. But Jesus who teaches people to love their enemies and love the Samaritan, which is somebody outside of your ethnos, that temple is, is resurrected and therefore vindicated, but that's not taught in church. And if you can find that where that's taught very clearly all the time, I would love to highlight that church. We'll put it up and promote them. I don't care who it is.
Well, I mean, on paper, yeah, the church does teach that, but you would be very hard pressed to see. I've never heard anybody explain it like that.
They don't really talk about the temple being destroyed much. The reason for that is because it's ignored. It's vastly ignored by all mainstream churches. It's ignored because people like to have solidarity with their own ethnos. They prefer the solidarity of their own ethnos and prioritize it over...
the kingdom of God. That's just a brutal fact because you know like that statement that you that someone made to you David, God's going to send that kid to hell. There are only particular like you can only make that statement about the designated and this is for this is not a liberal argument at all. The liberals do this too because they have the scapegoats the Russians and
and the conservative have their scapegoat, the cousins or whatever. So it just betrays the fact that people have their boundaries. They like to set boundaries to their level of compassion. They always do. Everybody, even including people inside the church, whether that church may be the true church or whatever, they like to set boundaries
to their compassion, which is not something that Jesus did. When Jesus went up on the cross, he did not say that I go up on the cross just for my own people, for the Israelite people. He said it's for the world. It's John 3, 16, the verse that Christians love to quote.
He gave Himself up for the world and the world includes all ethnos, all tribes, all genders or whatever. It doesn't like compassion, even in the Old Testament you see this like God's compassion is not limited to, is something that is unlimited.
That's why he was able to say, Jesus was able to say to the thief on his side who spent 99% of his life doing sin or carrying out criminal activities or whatever. He gave him his mercy and said that he will go to paradise. And we Christians don't do that. We Christians like to put that in dialectical terms with Jesus who is going to wipe out the enemies.
and they're going to do a competition within themselves. You know that Jesus, the ruler, the exterminator Jesus versus the merciful Jesus. You know, Janus-faced God, as Michael Harden likes to say. That's what Christians worship. It's not just an objectification, David. It's also a Janus-faced God, a paganized version of Jesus.
Which is like one side is complete. But it is an objectification because it's an object of your imagination. It's not real. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is not real. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's totally false. It's something that humans made up. It's a mechanism, a psychological mechanism.
It's literally made up fictional character. Isaiah 2, 4, he will judge between the nations and will settle dispute for many nations. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. So that's the vision that the Bible paints. And it's not an ethnos orientation.
Matthew 5, 9, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. Do you remember when Ron Paul was booed violently by the Republican? Yeah, the golden rule. Yeah. In South Carolina, when he said they should follow the golden, we should follow the golden rule in our foreign policy. Peacemakers, blessed are the peacemakers. That's what I'm trying to tell you.
Most religious folks don't love Jesus. That hissing, violent sound they made towards Ron Paul was your clue. When he invoked Jesus to deal with their real God, which was the God of war and the God of murder and all this other stuff, they got their real, their mask came off quick. And that's the reality that, you know, it's by God's grace that people who are more functionally pagan are
are still able to be considered Christians. If you replace, if you replace Ron Paul with literally Jesus saying that... They would try to kill him. It's the same, it would be the same outcome that happened 50,000 years ago when they crucified Jesus. It's so bizarre and it's so surreal if you think about it because...
You know, that's what I'm trying to say. When you objectify Jesus and you take the Lord's Supper as an object to a status, you don't have to encounter the person of Jesus and actually deal with that person. You can still, that's what I'm trying to say. Most, I would say most conceptions that I've encountered really don't require you to become Jesus.
Even the evangelicals who talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus still make Jesus like a invisible friend who gives you encouragement and hope, but they don't actually get you to become Jesus still. They still lack that becoming part.
You know, Jesus is going to help you through this trial of this bad diagnosis. But Jesus is OK with you starving Iranians because their leaders don't comply with our world banking system. Huh? How'd that happen? OK, Jesus wants you to have hope when you get the bad diagnosis and he wants you to have faith that it will be healed. Right. But he talks way more. And as I've indicated with these texts so far, the Bible talks way more about justice for the oppressed
stopping the wars, swords into plowshares than he does about your cancer diagnosis going away or whatever your illness is. But yet that's not what evangelical Christians are taught on their radio stations. They're not taught that. They actually don't talk anything about war and a condemned condemnation of war. Too bad. Too bad. And then we wonder, see, that's what I'm saying. That's putting lipstick on a demonic war pig.
Because a lot of these evangelical stations, they talk about trying to stop your children from turning out to be heathens and gender ideology books in the library. But they don't understand this is something, again, I think, I don't know if anybody's ever said this, but I believe that the link between the gender insanity is a direct consequence of our spirit of legion, of empire.
Right.
you're putting, you're, you're fighting a uphill battle because you haven't hit the core problem, which is wicked wars, which warp people's moral reality. You know, you can't, you can't go along with murdering and starving and stealing and plundering when the Bible, the entire scope of the Bible, the main agenda seems to be against that. You know, we have to look at these things like art. And that's another thing is that we don't understand the level, the importance of art.
When Jesus is looking upon Jerusalem, he says, oh, Jerusalem, if you had only known the ways of peace. He doesn't say, oh, Jerusalem, if you had only known the ways of having hope when you get a cancer diagnosis, then you would be Christian. He doesn't say, oh, Jerusalem, if you had only known the ways of keeping your gender ideology right for your children. He doesn't say, oh, Jerusalem, if you had only stopped aborting your kids. Oh, Jerusalem, if you had only, you know, all these things.
are not the point compared to the obvious point, which is what is he talking about? Here's the key indicator, the ways of peace. What are the ways of peace? The ways of peace is not pro-life. It is pro-life, but I'm trying to get people to get out of their comfort zone and fake objectified Jesus, right? It's not this little cushiony little nonsense, you know? The ways of peace is not quiet time with Jesus in the morning, right?
That's not what he's talking about. Oh, Jerusalem, if you'd only done your morning devotions. Oh, Jerusalem, if you'd only done the bureaucracy right for the church. Oh, Jerusalem, if you'd only got the philoque right. He didn't say that. It wasn't on his mind. Why? Because it's not the point. It's pretty obvious. Because all of these things, most of the things that Jesus has taught or exemplified,
Most of these things we're dealing with our mimetic desire, rampant mimetic desire. I mean, just look at what he says. Like when he says, turn the other cheek, when somebody is making you carry, when a Roman soldier is making you carry his luggage, your backpack or whatever, don't carry it for just one mile, carry it for two miles.
All of these things are Jesus' method of making evil fall on itself. Right? They're not... Jesus is not saying virtue signal. He's not saying that you signal your virtue, show everyone how you're a nice soft man, you won't harm a fly or anything like that. No, he's providing you with a martial arts tactic.
of how you can use the force of evil and make it fall on itself. He's not saying return evil. He's saying how you can defeat evil as he himself did on the cross. He's saying how you can defeat evil without returning evil for evil, without returning violence for violence. And that is the crux of Jesus' message, his teaching, his sacrifice on the cross.
That's why I think a lot of, by the way, a lot of the traditional churches have this somber view when they have the Eucharist, like it's a funeral. It's not supposed to be a funeral. It's supposed to be a victory. Yeah. But I think they, I think this is kind of a sidebar comment, but I think they have that, that, that feeling of a funeral because they feel guilty for what they're doing. You know, I understand why, but, but it's, um, they're, they're reenacting a scapegoat murder and they don't really understand why, you know,
That's not the point of the Eucharist. That's part of it is to kind of become aware of it, but it's not to stay in that guilt of like, oh my gosh, you know, I have to be, I have to be somber as I kill God's liberal son, you know, and eat them. What? You know what I mean? They're afraid because they're afraid if they're smiling, that'll, that, that will make them look mimetically like they're, uh,
flippant or not guilty enough, not ashamed enough, or that they're too sadistic, you know, they're smiling, what are you, a psycho killer? So they're afraid to show any emotions, which is similar to the clinical disposition of a lot of ritual sacrifices throughout history, where the priest could not be like, ah, we're going to stab them. They had to be very clinical about it, you know, when they would plunge the knife in or rip the heart out
there was a kind of clinical nature that was a somber kind of approach, right? And interesting to note that that somberness is not, it's not that you can't have, emotions are not evil, but I think it's a tell, like a poker tell, that people have not figured out exactly what the point of the Eucharist really is about, which is rather than reenacting the role of killing a scapegoat,
your job is to become the scapegoat. To risk being marginalized by your entire community is to be Christ, right? To risk having
forgiveness of enemy, even if that marginalizes your friends that have you in a good position, is to be Christ. To stand in solidarity with the vulnerable and the socially dispossessed is to be Christ, right? To not want vengeance and violence is to be Christ. To be creative and not in your acts of peace rather than to be creative in acts of violence is to be Christ. Those are the things that the Eucharist is about. It's about
standing in the position of being consumed by the crowd. So when you consume the person who is consumed by the crowd, you will be consumed by the crowd in your life. If you're consuming the person as if you were just a part of the mob, a dirty mob that will go ahead and do this ritual and go about being a horrible person politically and socially afterwards, then you're not doing the Eucharist. That's not the point. It is a technology too. It allows us to see with the eyes of the scapegoat.
Like Jesus. Yeah. And just as we partake of the Eucharist, we are the world is to partake of the body of Christ, which is the church. Right. So that's like, you know, that's the that's the mimetic. I don't know if you can call this mimetic phenomena as well, but it's sort of is in a way that if you become like Jesus and
you are also sacrificing yourself just as Jesus did, sacrificing yourself up for the good of the world. And some people say that self-sacrifice can be equated with giving up your favorite video game or whatever so that you can pursue degrees or not. No, that's not self-sacrifice. That's completely sacrificial.
The self-sacrifice is always for the betterment of others, especially your neighbor, right? Your neighbor and your family. It's a self-sacrifice in the Christian Jesus sense is a refusal to participate in violence against somebody else too. Yeah. There's a lot of people that will lay down their life for their neighbor in theory for a war. And then they die for a war that should have never happened.
But that true Christian self-sacrifice is a refusal to sacrifice your neighbor when you have the opportunity to. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's why they tempted him, come down from the cross and all that, send your angels, send your army. That was the temptation of sacrifice. You see, the whole story is about this. Like every passage, you know, you don't have to reach. There's not, we don't just have one person
passage, obscure passage that we've made this theology out of. It's literally everywhere you look, you know? What's he being tempted by? Is he being tempted to be a liberal? Is he being tempted to be abortionist? Is he being tempted to be a gender bender? What's he being tempted by the persecutors on the cross? They're saying, come on down and give us your sacrificial violence.
By the way, they're tempting him just like Satan tempted him. He tempted him the same way. Come on down and show your power through earthly violence. So the mob, the crowd, has become the voice of Satan once again, right?
It's all there. It's so obvious when you see the art. That's why Jesus says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. He's not saying that out of some... He's saying the truth. They're literally the individuals in that crowd. Literally are not... They don't know what they're doing because they are possessed by the spirit of the accuser.
That is Jesus's anthropological insight, his observation of what the crowd is doing. The crowd has been possessed by the devil. That's the most frustrating thing about this podcast is that we point out over and over again that we do know what we're doing, and yet people act like they haven't a clue, the ones that go to church their whole life, too. Crazy. Yeah. Whatever. We'll figure it out. I want to keep going here. There's a lot more passages I want to quote.
Luke 4, 18 through 19, Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61. The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. What's good news to the poor? If we get cold fusion and we can power our homes, endless energy for our cars, not spending thousands of dollars every month for all this stuff.
Good news for the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Zechariah 7, 9 through 10. This is what the Lord Almighty said. Administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.
Jeremiah 22:3, this is what the Lord says, "Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor, the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place." You know, you look at, again, I do not see that as the main emphasis when you go to church culture. When you go to church cultures, I don't see that
really being emphasized. I see emphasis like, I'll give you just broad strokes. I see emphasis on holiness, reverence. I see emphasis in some traditions on supernatural healings, supernatural joy. I see emphasis on right thinking or correct doctrines or formulations for the atonement in some traditions.
I see an emphasis on being different from the world in a pious sense. You know, I see emphasis on personal holiness and striving for perfection and lack of sin. But I don't see an emphasis on. And again, I'm not condemning people's traditions. I know everybody has these people. They can cite thousands of great people. I'm saying the atmosphere when you go to a you blindfold yourself.
blindfold yourself, spin around 100 times, get into a van, someone drives you to a random church in America, will you hear the application in your time about what it means to rescue from the hand of the oppressor? Will you hear about the vulnerable, the orphans and the widows? Will you understand that we should not be plotting evil against each other? Will you understand how that applies to the prisoner?
When Jesus says, by the way, that those who visited those in prison were visiting me, that seems to indicate that he doesn't have a high view of throwing everybody in prison for every kind of nonviolent victimless choice. It seems to be a hardship he doesn't want people to have to go through. He thinks that's unjust. It doesn't mean that there isn't a place for punishment for real violence and real crime. But over and over and over again, Matthew 5, 38 through 44, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person.
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Psalm 72, 12, for he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.
You know, Ezekiel 34, 16, I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice. It seems to indicate that the more history continues in the direction of the knowledge of the Lord, those who rely on being sleek and strong will be destroyed. And those who bind up the injured and strengthen the weak will be vindicated and inherit the earth.
And then you look at Matthew 26, I just want to read this real quick.
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take and eat, this is my body. Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.
This idea of this new covenant that he inaugurated is about, like you said, self-giving rather than violent. His body, his blood is poured out by refusing to engage in violence or revenge. Peter stabs somebody's ear, he heals it as they're persecuting him and torturing him. That's part of
drink my body, eat my blood, you know, drink, eat my body and drink my blood. That's part of that. You're becoming, you are consuming his actions and dispositions that were taking place while his blood was being poured out. Does that make sense? You're taking on all of that. You're saying, I want to be like that. If I am being disrespected, if I'm being humiliated, if I'm being blamed,
And I want to structure my communities in a way that stops that from continuing on. That's how you honor and drink the blood and eat the body of Christ. And that's how you honor it, by making sure your community stops doing the same thing over and over again. Great catharsis, where there is none to be had. Verse Corinthians 10, Paul says, Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? What does it mean to participate in the blood of Christ? Participate in his disposition, his mimetic model.
of nonviolence and refusal to to to enact revenge or to get payback on his enemy is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of christ because there is one loaf we who are many are one body for we all share the one loaf so we are unified through nonviolence we are set apart through nonviolence and a pursuit of justice if you are going to a church
You're not coming out with the disposition every week that I need to be more nonviolent more peaceful more Creative and serving my human beings around me. You're not you're not hearing about God. That's not the God of this story Yeah, that's a canary. It's terrifying really. Yeah, I mean when when people tend to worship a sacrificial fake made-up version of Jesus and
It's like them looking at Star Wars and seeing Darth Vader kill a bunch of kids and thinking that's the prescription when that's not the prescription. The Old Testament violence and all of that is to teach you what violence does. And it is to
emphasize how violence is an incomplete partial solution whereas Jesus is non-violence crucifixion which is not resisting violence with violence that's non-violence that is a much more effective solution and people like to point to the old testament episodes of violence
And they like to say, oh, you know, the violence has been prescribed. Yeah, but they did not work. Israel, the people of Israel, when they carried out those violence, it did not work. There was there never existed an Israelite nation that was supposed to be what, you know, the book of Moses prescribed. It never happened.
because and the old testament itself emphasizes this again and again it's because israelites the is the hebrew people the israelites became idolaters they they committed sacrifice human sacrifice again and again and that is why god was always grieved about them this was this is the key thing that people tend to ignore too conveniently when they push a sacrificial version of god
They tend to ignore that God was always grieving when the people engaged in wars and idolatry and human sacrifice.
But Jesus is the perfect, Jesus is the standard. He is the president for, he is the ultimate role model for how we Christians are to behave. We are not supposed to behave like the judges or the Israelites or the King David or King Solomon. We're not supposed to mimic those characters. Those characters are there for a reason, but it's not for mimicking.
We are supposed to imitate Christ. He is the ultimate. And that's how we come to the concept of nonviolence. It's because Christ himself exemplified nonviolence, just as you said. I appreciate your time coming on and want folks to check out the article. We'll link to it in the description notes and continue to think about these matters as we stand on the precipice as always.
with pointless wars that don't need to happen. When you are saturated with Christ, as we have described him today, which is what the Bible describes him today, when you're saturated with Christ, you have no appetite for war with Iran or war with anybody. You know, you don't have that kind of appetite to hurt people, you know, to feel better about yourself. And it's important for people to think about that. That's the solution. And if you have that mindset,
Then it gives you all the hope in the world to do great things. And, you know, it's, I think, as I say many times throughout the years, the appetite for direct violence continues to wane. If they were to do, you know, a vicious inciting incident like a Gulf of Tarkin to start Iran war, the country would not stay united against Iran. It wouldn't even be united in the first couple weeks probably.
And it would backfire because they'd poke holes in the inciting incident because of alternative media. Alternative media is not a fluke that's just randomly unrelated to the gospel. People, again, who don't have this narrative thrust right that Christ came to help set the captives free and the oppressed free.
they will miss the biblical and Christian role in media technology evolving through the years and allowing for the oppressed to be exposed and the marginalized to be heard more than ever before. So any kind of Gulf of Tonkin inciting incident to start a war with Iran would quickly backfire. We saw what happened with October 7th where horrible atrocities were done to innocent Israelis, but then it was used as this pretext to go on this perpetual war campaign for a corrupt guy.
who's wanted to use it for his own power purposes. And this is something that, again, if this had happened in 2003, would be easier for them to have pulled off. They can't pull it off as well in 2025. The whole world sees the crimes that we're doing to the oppressed a lot more easier. And our appetite to keep it going is waning. The problem is, is that people will become so numbed out because of delusions.
delusional foods, poisons, chemicals, things like that, that numb people out. They can't truly feel as well as they want to feel anymore. That's one of the things that Satan has used to keep this game going longer than it should have, is that our awareness for victims continues, but we're also numbed out via poisons and trauma and garbage media and all kinds of distractions. So we have to figure out that. We have to navigate that. That's important, is how to become
not numb, but actually acutely sensitive to our experiences, but not sensitive in a direction that it leads us into tirades or depression and all kinds of things like that, but rather into constructive, positive, joyful action. That's what we should be pushing towards. Thank you very much. My pleasure, David. It was nice talking to you. Yes. Email me hello at theneighborschoice.com if you have any feedback for us. We'll be glad to share with it on the show if you so indicate. Thanks, David.
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