We are told Americans don't like soccer. I'm not sure that's true. The first World Cup game had more viewers than any game in the NBA Finals. Either way, it's interesting how much God uses sports to describe how we should live our life on earth. Run your race, receive the prize, and whatever you do, don't beat the air.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day and bring it to the Bible so we can walk away with some peace and perspective. New headlines every single day. But Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story. The story of the day is the World Cup is a lot of fun. 

It's awesome. Let's celebrate the World Cup for a minute. They may crash out here soon. So let's enjoy a good, you know, patriotic national team victory while we can. This was only our 10th World Cup victory ever. It was against Paraguay on Friday. 

Paraguay leading up to the tournament after the World Cup. They beat Brazil. They beat Argentina, one of the best defenses in the world. And we scored four goals on them. We've never scored four goals in a World Cup game ever before. If we keep this up, we could legitimately win this thing. 

I don't know if we can win it. But we can go far and we can have fun. Now, hold on. Listen, I know what you're saying. You're saying, Slater, I don't care about soccer at all. Soccer's stupid, man. 

You don't have to. You don't have to care. My wife hates it with a passion. But after we won on Friday, she decided to be patriotic about it. Now I'll give you one opportunity to care. This is my one convincing of you to care about soccer for a month. 

A month of your life. That's all I ask. And I'm like moderate. low to moderate fan. I love, I like the World Cup because I like international sporting events, but soccer, like I played in high school or whatever. Like I like soccer. 

I get it. Um, but I'm going to, so I'm not like going to convince you to be the biggest fan of the world, but you like to like it for a little bit for a while. Uh, here's why, here's my one argument. We've got to pay. We've got a couple of patriotic things going now, right? The, uh, us hockey team won the gold medal flew around the moon the other day. 

And now we got this, like we had some good things happen in here and it's been fun. you look at the USA hockey team right they were having a blast they were winning but because they dared to love this country and because they also dared to talk to the president on the phone in the locker room the left decided to hate the hockey team now like winning on the international stage is right wing coded and it's flag waving so because of their tds tds the the left has to hate it All the more reason for us to love it. The New York Times, they wrote an article. It's a real life article. They said, uh, it wouldn't be a world cup without a problematic host. Russia in 2018, Qatar in 2022. 

Now the U S is on a slide under humanity's microscope. They're making fun of us overseas. That was, that was the tweet they sent out. New York Times that the tweet about that article, like, what are you talking about? The New York Times is writing about the problematic hosts of the World Cup. That's us. 

We're the hosts of the World Cup. You're putting us in the same category as Russia and Qatar. So that's my argument. The left hates winning. They hate patriotism. They hate the flag. 

They hate America. And we have all these awesome things that have happened recently. And this could be another fun one that the left hates. Therefore, we should love it. That's my argument. Can you get on board for like a couple of weeks? 

I don't know. Maybe they'll get blown out next week and the whole thing's over anyway. So I don't know. It is curious why Americans don't like soccer that much. This is like a fascinating question. Why is this not a more popular sport or why don't more Americans love soccer? 

And some things I've heard are like, our best athletes go into football, baseball, and basketball. and some hockey, right? But we're a big country. You'd think we'd still have some good soccer players, like enough to hang around. It's just not our thing. We just don't, I don't know why. 

There was a funny article I read about people in Boston asking all these Scottish people, right? So these Scottish people are showing up to Boston and the Boston people are like, what are you doing here? What brings you to town? And the Scottish people are very confused because this is the most important sporting event in the history of their country. that happens to be taking place in Boston. And the people of Boston don't even know that it's happening. 

I'm trying to think of any sort of analogy like that. Like, I mean, imagine we have a Super Bowl every year, but like, like the biggest Super Bowl ever for some reason, and it's taking place in Scotland and they don't even know, like Scotland doesn't even know. Like, oh, what do you, why are there so many Americans here all of a sudden? Like, that would be a weird thing. We just don't, we don't really get on board. At least maybe we don't. 

I think we do actually, more than, maybe this whole thing, maybe Americans do love soccer. I got some numbers I'll share in a second about the NBA ratings. The soccer ratings were higher than the NBA ratings, NBA finals. Anyway, here's my question as to why soccer's not more prominent in America. One reason I think is it's a weirder track to go pro in soccer. It's like basketball and football. 

Baseball is kind of weird too, but basketball and football, it's a pretty easy track or it's a clear path. You play in high school, then you play in college and then you go pro. But soccer, my understanding is there's like these developmental leagues from a young age. And then when you get a certain age, if you're really good, you go to Spain. And it's like, what's going to limit a lot of people. So college soccer isn't like the track you take. 

College soccer isn't like a big competitive sport. It's not how you play. it. It's not where the best go. The best don't go to play college soccer. Interesting. 

But then why not watching it? Why don't Americans like watching it? What is it about the American mind or the American psyche where we don't watch it? Is it as simple as we don't win? We're really, we just like things we win at. That's why my wife doesn't, my wife doesn't like it because not because we don't win it, but because sometimes no one wins. 

Tie. She hates the tie. My wife, with a passion despises the concept of tying in a sporting event. Great disgust that you can tie in a soccer game. She hates that. I think Americans don't like soccer because of the flops. 

The flops are so lame. Now, basketball players have started to flop, and I think their ratings show that as well. But I will say this, to that argument, I hate the flop. I was watching the USA game, of course, and a USA defender tripped a guy in Paraguay, and the American got the yellow card. And they took a free kick. Paraguay took the free kick. 

And then right after they took the free kick, the ref blew the whistle. Because I guess in the replay booth, they looked at the tape and the American guy never even touched the guy from Paraguay. Did not touch him. And you know the guy from Paraguay falls over like someone shot his leg, but never even touched him. So they took away the yellow card for the American and gave the yellow card to the Paraguayan guy for lying and cheating. flopping and making it all up. 

So there was some sweet justice there. And I like that a lot. I think that's really, I've been watching years ago and being like, why can't we not take care of this? And they did, they took care of that in FIFA. So that's really nice. And as a soccer fan or not, the fact that all these people from around the world are coming to America and loving it here, that's awesome. 

Scottish fans going to Texas barbecue this German guy Freddy going to Places that many people in America have never been to or heard of Fairhope, Alabama calling in the most beautiful places ever seen in his life Again places Americans have never been to Japanese fans going to Nashville, taking in the beautiful lights of Broadway and country music. It's all very fun to watch the rest of the world love this country. And I want all of us to fall in love with America again, too, just like these foreigners are loving their time here. I want Americans to love their time here, too. So that's been a fun aspect of, you know, of the tournament seeing all the people come here and uh and love it and love the sights love the scenery and love the people so maybe we'll go far in this tournament our next game is uh friday and then we got a game after that next thursday and maybe we'll go pretty far as my dad always said whenever there was an upset my dad always said that's why they play the game here are the numbers uh 25 million people watched the usa game most ever for an American soccer game. 

And it beat all of the NBA finals games. 16 million people watched game one and game two of the NBA finals. Then Trump went to game three. So I watched a little bit of game three. 23 million people watched. They got a nice bump for Trump, the Trump bump. 

And then game four went down to 20 million. And then game five was 17 million people. So even game three, the biggest one, 23 million people watched. That was the most watched NBA finals game since 1998. But more people watch the soccer game and wait until we make a run. would be 50, 60 million people watching these games, maybe 100 million if we get pretty far down the end. 

And that'd be great. So again, a good year for cool, awesome things. America hockey team winning gold flying around the moon. It's almost like we're it's almost like we're on the cusp of a golden age in America. Love that. All right. 

So let's go to the Bible here. I like I'll take opportunities to talk about athleticism and athletic references in the Bible. Think about this. This is very fascinating. You know, we think of the Bible as this Maybe certainly atheists, I shouldn't even say that, certain people, lots of people will think of the Bible as maybe something distant or far away or irrelevant or foreign. 

And this is true, that there's all these references, let's say to like even money, like a Daenerys or whatever. Like, I don't know what that money is. Or there's references to lengths or measurements that we don't use in America. So it can seem kind of foreign and different. A lot of references to farming, which used to be very applicable to Americans, but not so much to us anymore. But there are in the Bible tons of references to sports. 

God talks about running a race, receiving the prize, fighting the good fight, playing by the rules. Second Timothy 2 .5, an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. Think about that. This is in the section Advice to a Young Pastor. You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will also be able to teach others also. 

" So go on, be, I'm coaching you. You player will become the coach. You go on and coach others, right? Pass it on, pass the truth, spread the word. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. 

Soldiers expect life to be hard. They expect their deployments to be uncomfortable. Athletes as well. Difficult to train. You're going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be sore. 

You're going to push the limits. Similarly, the Christian life. Difficulties will occur. But as Jesus said, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself. take up his cross and follow me. It's Matthew 16, 24. 

Spurgeon says, Paul does not exhort Timothy to be a common or ordinary soldier, but to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. For all soldiers and all true soldiers may not be good soldiers. There are men who are but just soldiers and nothing more. They only need sufficient temptation and they will readily become cowardly, idle, useless, and worthless. But he is the good soldier who is bravest of the brave, courageous at all times, who is zealous, does his duty with heart and earnestness as well. Charles Spurgeon. 

And part of being a good soldier also is not being concerned with the affairs of this life, right? You got to be focused. I just think of, Michael Phelps comes to mind, because I was a swimmer first of all, but he's also like, I mean, there's so many athletes we could do, but Michael Phelps first comes to mind. Just extreme, crazy amounts of focus, like focus, like nothing, it's just swim, eat, breathe, like that's the only thing that matters. Everything with a diet, everything with exercise, everything with sleep, everything is only focused around the day, swimming for the next meet, the ultimate goal, all to culminate in this one week of swimming competition. four years from today, right? 

That is maximum focus. There's no time for girls. There's no time for anything. No fun. You're never doing anything fun ever. You're just swimming. 

Maximum focus for sports. Now in sports, after the whistle blows, none of it matters. Just a game. But when the whistle blows to end our life, that's when eternity starts, right? So in sports, the game's over and then the rest of life goes on. When the whistle of life ends, that's when eternity begins. 

This life. the only thing that the only purpose of it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then love your neighbor as yourself. You do that, you win the game, and then you go to heaven for eternity. Pretty good. So I got off on a tangent because I mentioned just playing by the rules, right? You can't make up your own rules in the Christian life. 

Here is the Bible. Follow it. We're always trying to do things our own way. We need to play by the rules and do it God's way. Paul talks about wrestling, running, boxing, and all these sports. You got to follow the rules. 

And stay focused. Don't run aimlessly. Don't beat the air. 1 Timothy 4, 7, just like being ridiculous. You stay focused, train yourself for godliness. And like in sports, you got to have self -control. 

It's one of the biggest vices in America is lack of self -control. Everything's about feelings and whim. People go on emotions, not constantly, just emotions, like emotional, instant gratification all the time. That's not how it works in sports. Of course, there's no instant gratification in sports. It's ridiculous. 

There's a practice a lot all the time. That's why Paul says 1 Corinthians 9 .25, he says, every athlete exercises self -control in all things. Isn't that amazing? And the Greek word here literally is about athletes preparing for a big competition to not eat junk food, don't drink alcohol, just self -control related to your sport. But what Christians are doing is way more important, because the self -control that we're trying to show is not for a perishable wreath. At the Greek Olympic Games, you get this wreath, and then I don't know how long it would last, like a couple of days, and then it withers away, and you've got to throw it away. 

It's a perishable wreath. And I think about everything the athletes do to get one of those. But what we're trying to do is or what Jesus gave us, is an imperishable one, eternity. So enjoy the World Cup, enjoy the patriotism, enjoy the hospitality of the whole thing. And it's great, it's a fun month. 

I think it's a part of America's golden era. I think it's conservative and patriotic and good, and we should embrace it. And even if you don't like soccer, suck it up for a month, hop on board, it's fun. And also use it as a reminder. And also there's a bunch of Christian athletes. And on the soccer team, we have a bunch of Christian men who are leading the way and leading Bible studies and praying before the games and all that. 

And that's good. It should be encouraged as well. And as this is all happening, just think about the race that we're running every day here on earth and the imperishable crown that we will soon receive. YouTube . com. If you could please subscribe to that. 

We're almost at 5 ,000 followers. That'd be great. That's another benchmark that YouTube really likes. It'd be at 5 ,000. It shows that people really like you. And then they'll spread us out even more in the algorithms. YouTube . com slash at politicsbyfaith. Spread the word.

A man from Sudan tried to behead a man in a street in Belfast, Northern Ireland. When will it be enough for the people of Europe and America? When will we reverse this Third World migration? What does the Bible say about this?

Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with some peace and perspective. We do this because there's new headlines every day, but Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story. And if you could subscribe to our YouTube page, that'd be great. YouTube . 

com slash at politics by faith. The story of the day today, a man from Sudan tried to cut the head off of an Irish man in the middle of the street. Here's what happened. Man from Sudan, just let that sink. I'm sorry. I should have said, This happened in Belfast, Ireland. 

This guy's from Sudan. Now, it may be worth looking at a map. Belfast, Northern Ireland is nowhere near Sudan. Ireland has nothing to do with Sudan. They have no history together. They were never a colony. 

Ireland was never a colonizing power. I don't know the exact route this gentleman took from Sudan to Northern Ireland, but if you just go straight, then you have to go through Libya, Tunisia, Italy, France, England, and then Northern Ireland. This person's in his thirties. We may never know his exact age, having been born in Sudan. And we have video of this man from Sudan sitting on top of an Irish man in Belfast, cutting off his head. He's in the act of slicing off his head with a knife. 

And there are people standing around yelling at him to get off. Now I should note here that the BBC decided to characterize this event with this headline, man taken to hospital. with quote serious injuries after stabbing. he was not stabbed as much as sliced in the neck in an attempt to cut off his head the mass migration of people into western countries has to stop and it has to be reversed we have gone absolutely mad we have gone suicidal with our empathy let's give you one fun multiculturalism story it's a 15 year old girl in germany and there's a kid warning sorry i should have given a kid warning earlier sorry uh kid warning There's a 15 -year -old girl in Germany who was gang raped. This is in 2020. Nine males happened in a park. 

One of the rapists was given no prison time because he was underage. And by underage, when I say underage, what do you think? You think under like 18 or something, right? No, no, under the age of 20. Of the, uh, excuse me, did I say one? I take it back. 

I'm sorry. I said one of them didn't spend time in jail. None of them spent time in jail except for one of them. He was a 19 year old from Iran. And this happened in Germany. The court, the judge, no, no, excuse me, the, uh, the, this, the guy from Iran who was a part of the rape, he said, what man doesn't want that? 

That was his excuse and justification for rape. Now, none of those men went to jail except for that one guy. Okay. In 2024, so that happened in 2020, 2024, this woman somehow was able to text one of the rapists and she texted him and called him a disgraceful rapist pig and a disgusting freak she was sentenced to a weekend in jail for her verbal attacks so just to be clear the act of rape by the foreigners no jail time the act of verbal assault you disgraceful rapist pig and disgusting freak which are all true weekend in jail for the woman okay that's suicidal empathy so what's broken here it's a couple things first there's something to be said about how the people who were videotaping this beheading took a long time. Now, I don't know exactly. 

I could never really know until you're in the heat of that moment, how you would react. There's ways that you like to think you would react, but you can't really know until you're there. But when there's the man and the woman shouting, hurry up, like, like someone help do something and like, Oh, he's going to do something. Hurry up. Like you're not doing anything. If you're yelling, hurry up, then you're there. 

You're never going to do anything. They would have stood there the whole time as this, as this head gets slowly sliced off. So that's the first. or another concerning part of this whole thing. The government is not going to do anything. There will be riots. 

This is in Northern Ireland. It's a part of the country that's known to do such a thing. The government in the UK is absolutely the worst. They won't say anything about it. They don't want anyone sharing the video because they say it jeopardizes the investigation. It's not. 

It's about information control because it is quite radicalizing to see one of your fellow countrymen get butchered on the street by someone from Sudan. There's a story to be said, of course, about high -trust societies. We'll save that for the radio show. We've talked a lot about that before, but you can't take people from no trust or low trust societies and just throw them in a high trust society and think that everything's going to go great. It was Alexander Hamilton in 1802. He said in the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency, meaning it won't go well when you put ingredients that don't mix By the way, Alexander Hamilton was talking about immigrants from Germany and Ireland and France when he wrote that in 1820, but not about the Sudan. 

Okay. Uh, let's get to the Bible. I need the Bible. Um, you're called to love your enemy and the government has the sword and should use it to defend the quality of life of their people. Romans 13 three says rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? 

Then do what is good and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. " Now, I don't know if this person was saying he was a Muslim, but in the Quran, if this was, I don't know the exact motivation of what happened in this particular case, but if this guy was a Muslim and he was killing a Christian, then he was following the word of Allah. He was doing great work here. He wasn't in the wrong. 

So the Bible says, if you're in the wrong, be afraid, for our leaders don't bear the sword in vain. But if he's a Muslim, then he wasn't doing wrong. by his perspective, just so you know. But our Bible says, for he is the servant of God, meaning that our rulers are the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Our government is not avenging and they are not carrying out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. And they're not even preventing wrongdoers from coming to our shores. Now, multiple things can be true at the same time here. And this is one of the tensions in the Bible, and there's many of these, and I appreciate all of them. We need to have discernment on how to best love, like love your enemies, right? So you have that on the one side, we've got to love our enemies. And then also there are enemies who are invading our nation. And we have to balance this as individuals and as a nation that has a government that has a biblical role as well. Yes, love your enemies. We want everyone also to know Jesus and become Christians all throughout the world. Also Deuteronomy 7 .1, when the Lord, your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it. clears away and clear away many things before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you. And when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You must make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. So the anger of your Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them. You shall destroy their altars and break down their sacred pillars and cut down their wooden images and burn their carved images with fire." Now, Now, I'm not saying we need to go over to Sudan and destroy them. I'm just saying we should prevent people from the third world coming to America to destroy us. I'm not calling for the same zeal shown there to destroy other peoples. 

I'm calling for just a little bit of zeal, a teeny tiny amount of zeal to prevent other countries from destroying our culture. I'm going to save an analysis here for the special that's going to come out this weekend about America. I'll tell the story of the Plymouth Foundation, the Plymouth Colony. And then the colony right next door, Merrymount, and it was run by this guy who was a total pagan. He was a British guy, pagan, came in and set up a pagan pole, like an asher pole with horns on the top of it. And they got super drunk all the time and orgies and carows and the whole thing. 

And the Puritans from Plymouth, they came in with guns ready to take them all out. and they didn't have to because they were also drunk. They just rolled in and detained them without a shot fired and exiled them back to England. They had a little bit of zeal. They didn't want this foreign culture. They're both from England in this case, but they were pagans. 

They didn't want this foreign pagan culture coming in to their new Israel. 1 Kings 11 says, But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughters of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidionites, and Hittites, from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, you shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods. He didn't listen. He had 300 concubines and the Bible says his wives turned away his heart. The difference with us in this story here is our hearts have already been turned away from God. 

which is why we are allowing this to happen. Jonathan Mayhew in 1750, his name came up the other day in our last special, he gave a sermon called A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non -Resistance to the High Powers. 1750, this is one of the original sermons, not one of the original, there were more before this, but one of the big sermons, most certainly the most known in the colonies, sermon against or justifying revolution. from a Christian perspective. And he said that civil tyranny is usually small in its beginning, like the drop of a bucket, till at length, like a mighty torrent, it bears down all before it and deluges the whole countries and empires. He said, tyranny brings ignorance and brutality along with it. 

It degrades men from their just rank into the class of brutes. It damps their spirits. It suppresses arts. It extinguishes every spark of noble ardor and generosity. Now these preachers, Mayhew and many others, they were speaking against a tyrant in the form of a king. This is a different kind of tyranny. 

And the government that is allowing this, and in many ways encouraging it, they need to be replaced as quickly as possible. Don't know what it will take. Don't know when people will care enough. YouTube . com slash at politics by faith to subscribe to our page. Spread the word.

Will you see Stephen Spielberg's new movie? Do we need more things in our culture causing us to question the existence of God? Luke 19 has some insight into what we should do with Spielberg's offer.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. This is where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with peace and perspective. New headlines every day. But Ecclesiastes says he's not the new one of the sun. So thanks for being here. To get the true story, the story of the day, Steven Spielberg says his new movie, Disclosure Day, will leave Christians questioning their faith in God. 

So we got a new movie coming out. Disclosure Day, it's a story of a cybersecurity expert and a TV meteorologist who race to leak classified government archives proving non -human intelligence exists. Yet, they're pursued by a shadowy establishment determined to suppress the truth to maintain the world order. Steven Spielberg hasn't had a good movie in like 20 years. Breitbart's, our friend John Nolte is the senior writer at Breitbart. He's one of the main culture writers there. 

massive movie expert. He watches like two movies a day for his life. He says Spielberg's on about a 20 -year losing streak, had some of the big hits early on at Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, got it, E . T. Then a couple other ones, I'll throw Saving Private Ryan in there. That was 1998. 

All right, so really since 1998, Nolte, who's seen them all, said Lincoln And Bridge of Spies, he said, we're all OK. But in that same period, you got the Indiana Jones with the ghost or the crystal skull, the adventures of Tin Tin, War Horse, BFG, The Post, Ready Player One, West Side Story, The Fablemans. The Fablemans and West Side Story were two just massive box office disasters. So he's going on this publicity tour for he's trying to make this as big next. And here is what he said on CBS Sunday morning. This truth were just known overnight. 

If the government announced, yes, we have been keeping this from you since 1947, that would mess up a lot of people. And the movie also takes the position of the church. What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? And, you know, is God our God only on this planet? Or is God a God for us? So what's broken of this story? 

Why talk about it here? I don't need my belief in God question. The devil's working overtime to try and get people to not believe in God. I don't need Steven Spielberg to join in on that effort or work as a tool of the devil. Romans 10 17 says faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. This needs to be our top priority. 

To increase our faith in God. I would say most people's problem in America is not that we don't question God's existence enough. It's that we question it too much already. You with me? The problem with America is there's too many people that believe in God and they haven't really thought it through. The problem is not enough people believe in God. 

Or they say they maybe kind of do, but they don't understand the ramifications of God. We need to spend more time in this country increasing our faith, not questioning it. I also don't need non -Christians telling me and other Christians what we should believe or not believe or what we should question. No thanks, Steven. Did you see the other day, the Pentagon, they reduced the number of recognized religions. 

How many religions could you name? If we sat down and brainstormed religions, how many could we name? We've got Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism or something. I don't know, five? Maybe we could sit here and get to eight. They've removed uh so they had uh 211 they had 211 religions and they cut it down to 31 and that's still like what 31 so they removed atheism that was a recognized religion humanism paganism wicca witches druidism asatru unitarian universalism which is hilarious that's the that's the funniest religion because it's just all of them they're like we believe in all the things of all the religions and they're all true as they what one is pronounced magic m -a -g -i -c -k i don't know shamanism deism n -car n -kin -car bathomet b -a -t -h -o -m -e -t i don't know and troth troth t -r -o -t -h what in the world so the ones that remain are a bunch of christian denominations and then agnostic bahai Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikh. 

Those are the main ones. But the idea, I bring this one up here because the idea that we had 211 recognized religions in the military, and by the way, still have a handful of blasphemous religions allowed in the military, shows how far we've fallen and how much we've already been questioning the existence of God. and coming to our own ridiculous conclusions. 211 different, after all, let's say Christianity is one of them, let's say. So 210 false, wrong conclusions after all the questioning of his existence. If I may make a suggestion before we get to the Bible, I hate to be a cultural prude here, but be careful of anti -Christian culture being I was going to say being pushed into your home and into your heart, but it's not, I mean, it's being pushed, but in the end you still allow it. 

So be aware of what you allow into your home and into your heart. C . S. Lewis wrote a lot about this. He said, the world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature. 

So I'm not saying every book you read has to be the Bible or that every book you read has to be about the Bible or that every book you read has to be explicitly Christian. But we need more Christians writing good literature of all genres. Read old books, right? The older authors are often usually more informed by Christian culture in their writing. And it's just better. See, this is Lewis's advice to read old books, at least every other. 

Secular books by secular authors can stumble upon a truth here or there. And again, I don't want to be a prude about it, but if I can just encourage us all, there's so much good stuff out there. There's so much good literature that's been written. that so many of the greats we haven't read before. Go to the good stuff. There's so much good literature and poems and movies and tv shows that have been made 

Why do we have to fill the short time that we have here on earth with more modern secular slop? There's enough good stuff there. I don't need new. My last C . S. Lewis quote of the day, it's one of my favorite quotes of his. 

He says, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half -hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered us, Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. Like a vacation. That's a British word for vacation. Vacation at the sea. 

We are far too easily pleased. Here we are messing around with Steven Spielberg's latest stupid movie, which it promises to question your existence of God. Oh yeah, I can't wait to play with that mud pie in a slum. What a fun night that'll be when God has so much more available to us. We are far, far too easily pleased. Let's go to the Bible. 

I read this, uh, this morning, Luke 19. And I got a minute, I read it and I was like, ah, this, I don't get it. This parable made no sense to me. So obviously I had to do more research on it. And I think it fits in here pretty nicely. We'll see if it does. 

So this is Luke 19. It's right after Zacchaeus climbed the sycamore tree. And he decided to give half of his goods. He's a thief. So he decided to give half of his goods away and then restore the people he defrauded fourfold. And then Jesus goes right into the parable of the ten minas. 

Minas, M -I -N -A -S. So one minas is three months. It's money. It's three months of wages, three months of labor. One is. So he gave ten servants each one amount of money, a lot of money. 

money, three months worth of money. So I don't know if you make 60 grand, right? So it's like a good chunk of money he gave people. So he gave each of those, each of the 10 servants, the same amount. Let me pick up here. He said, therefore, a nobleman went into a far country. 

This is the parable. To receive for himself a kingdom and then return. Calling 10 of his servants, he gave them 10 minus and said to them, engage in business until I come. But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, We do not want this man to reign over us. More on that in a second. When he returned, having received the kingdom, he offered these servants to whom he had given the money to be called to him, that he might know what they gained by doing business. 

What have you got? What did you do? I've been gone. What have you done with the money? The first came before him saying, Lord, your mina has made ten minus more. And he said to them, Well done. 

good servant, because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over 10 cities. " Pretty good. And the second came saying, Lord, your mina has made five minas. And he said to him, and you are to be over five cities. Then another came saying, Lord, here's your mina, which I kept laid away in a handkerchief, for I was afraid of you because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow. And he said to him, I will condemn you with your own words, you wicked servant. You knew that I was a severe man, taking what I did, taking what I did not deposit, reaping what I did not sow. Why then did you not put my money in the bank? And at my coming, I might have collected it with interest." And he said to those who stood by, take a mina from him and give it to him. who has ten minas. And they said to him, Lord, he has ten minas. I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given. 

But for the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me. is even if you are that third servant who did nothing and was scolded, at least we're not the enemy who were slaughtered, who were killed right there on the spot. The point of this part here is that everyone has to answer to the master, just like we will all have to answer to God. The main point of this parable is that Jesus's kingdom will not appear immediately. There will be a period of time when the King of Kings is absent before the kingdom will be fully set up. So this nobleman left, his master left, and he put in charge, he gave his servants a commission. 

to see if they would faithfully execute it until he returned. Go do business. Some did, some did not. We similarly have a short time here on earth to do God's will well. We need to be good and faithful servants. Now, I pray that we're not going to be the ones who reject God outright, like the people who hated the master and who were executed when the master got back. 

But everything we do on earth should be done in the hope of hearing well done, good and faithful servant. And I would argue part of being a good and faithful steward of our lives is how we spend our time, and what we consume, and who we support with our money. I suggest we choose accordingly. If you're watching this, listening to this on the podcast, you can join us over on YouTube, youtube . com slash atpoliticsbyfaith for free. 

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