The new pope is from America. That's neat. As people search his twitter account, they're finding more insight into his politics, including a criticism of JD and his application of Ordo Amoris to illegal aliens. 

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. There's a new Pope. I'm not Catholic so I have no connection to this and I don't know how it all even works. But I am an American and we have our first American Pope so that's something. The Catholic Church has had 217 Popes from Italy, 16 from France, six from Germany, five from Syria, four from Greece, and then on down the list,

the last Pope was from Argentina. And finally, America is an, is a underrepresented nation in something. This guy's from Chicago, he went to Villanova, served in Peru for a long time, he's a naturalized citizen of Peru.

And that is all I've learned from his Wikipedia page so far. Now in the few hours since he's been named Pope, people have perused his Twitter account. Now I don't know how much this guy was involved in his own Twitter account. Maybe he had some interns who don't know.

But if you look at his Twitter, big lefty guy, that's not really surprising. He is from Chicago. Now, since that's not really surprising, the Cardinals who voted for the Pope of Aspen, I'm guessing it was I think it was like 108 out of 133, something like that, of these Cardinals were put in there by the last Pope, so they're gonna vote for another guy who's kind of like this. One of the tweets that this Pope, new Pope sent out, was critical of J.D. Vance. It's something

that J.D. Vance said back in January. The new Pope tweeted this on February 3rd. He said, J.D. Vance is wrong. Jesus does not ask us to rank our love for others.

Uh oh.

So what is this about? This is back January 29th. J.D. Vance did an interview. The context here is illegal aliens versus American citizens. The left, they're the ones who have compassion for illegals

at the expense of American citizens. That's the argument. That's the concern here. That's what the election was all about. And here's JD Vance speaking to that.

But there's this old school, and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside

their own borders. That is no way to run a society. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is that the simple concept America first. It doesn't mean you hate anybody else. It means that you have leadership and President Trump has been very clear about this that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British Prime Minister should

care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that's a very welcome change.

A lot of progressive theologians, pastors, et cetera, did not like J.D. Vance for saying that. And they say, Oh, you know, how could you quote Jesus like that? We didn't quote Jesus. J.D. and then said, and I think it's a very Christian concept as well, which means it's compatible with Christian culture, not that it's an originally Christian concept. So first thing to note is we have two different spheres we're talking

about here. We're talking about the state and the role of the church. We got the role of the state and the role of the church, two different things. So that's the first point. There's another guy, his name's Heracles, Stoic philosopher. He wrote about oikosis. That's where we get the word economics. Economics means management of the home.

Oikos is home and the family in Greek. Heracles, we believe, was the first to come up with the concentric circles that we've talked about many times on this show before. And that is the self is in the middle, and then the next concentric circle out is the family, then the neighborhood, then the country, then the foreigners, the foreigner of the world.

His argument was that the natural thing is to take care of your family before others. And while Stoic said we should have greater concern for every circle beyond the next, he said that the key to the development of justice and ethical behavior is to concentrate or concern yourself first with you and your family and then you can move out. Jordan Peterson makes this point all the time as well. It's one of his central theses and one of his original messages at

least was focus on yourself before you go out and try to change the temperature of the planet, for instance. And I believe that's a Christian message as you yourself need to repent. You need to repent of your sin. Get the plank out of your own eye before you go trying to take the speck out of everyone else's, focus on you and you need to be born again. First and foremost, top priority before you go calling everyone else to repent

while you continue to live an unrepentant sin. Now, every social movement that I've ever lived through my entire life, it always concerns the outer circles of people, right? Black Lives Matter, global warming, right? The marginalized, right? It's always about these big outer circle things. And I've never lived through an era

where the main cultural impulse or calling was repentance of sin, of yourself, or as Leo Tolstoy called it, the regeneration of the inner man. Every social contagion, is a better word, that I've lived through is these outer circles of far away things and never a true focus on the self. Now, anytime there is a focus on the self in our modern world, it's all, you go girl, you're perfect just the way you are.

Everyone else is the problem. They just don't realize how wonderful you are. That's the self-help movement of the last couple of decades. And it's just as toxic. So what JD Vance is talking about here, the Latin term of it is ordo amoris, ordo amoris, ordered loves.

Lots of philosophers have talked about this. Go back to Thomas Aquinas was one of the first. And there is sight of this in the Bible. First Timothy 5.8 says, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family, there's an especially there, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. The progressive worldview is this undefined altruism and focus on the universe and love for

all of existence, oftentimes at the expense of those around you. So Thomas Aquinas, these ordered loves, ordo amoris, he says, but living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things. To love things, that is to say, in the right order. So that you do not love what is not to be loved.

Okay, we don't want to do that. Or fail to love what should be loved. Or have a greater love for what should be loved less. Or an equal love for things that should be loved more or less or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally. We're often all screwed up. There's things we should love that we don't.

There's things we don't love that we should. There's two things we love the same and we shouldn't. Or there's things we don't love the same and we're all screwed up. And Aquinas outlines the proper order. Remember the Stoics, it was self in the middle and then your family and you move out. Thomas Aquinas says, no, it's God who's in the middle. Then the self, spouse, family, extended family, community, nation, and then the world.

Augustine, he said, this, and then the world. Augustine, he said, this is true of everything created, but though it is good, it can be loved the right way or in the wrong way. In the right way, that is when the proper order is kept in the wrong way, when the order is upset.

So this is nothing new. This has been around for thousands of years. It's order versus disorder. Now, this new pope in February tweeted an article about a woman who was against what JD said, or at least JD's application of ordered loves. Now perhaps it's easier for the Pope to say, oh we should love the world because he's ahead of this this church that

has its arms in every corner of the world. So maybe that can be the Catholic church's first priority. And I would argue that the Protestant church, wherever your church is, my church has missionaries all over the world that we support and send out, and that's great. And you're called to do that.

But then there's also the role of the state. And the state should order its love. I believe as J.D. Vance has articulated it. If you're called as a Christian to go and minister to the world, great. But even that has an ordered love to it. There's no way that the Bible says to abandon your family, to go minister to people somewhere else around the world. I have a ministry field right here in my home that I need to pay attention to as well. And if we all focused more on a proper ordering of love,

then we would focus on the self and being born again and becoming a slave to Christ, slave to the Lord, where he is at the center and the highest of all order. I don't know what this Pope will do, who he will be, I don't really care. I'm concerned with your soul and mine. Let's put God in my children. Let's put God in my wife. Let's put God first. Seek first the kingdom of God. Let's pray about how the loves in our life should be properly rewarded.

Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com.

I've heard people suggest that we should take care of an unrepentant, wife-beating gang member from El Salvador. They use the Good Samaritan as their proof. I believe this is a misreading of the parable.

Transcribed with Cockatoo

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. We have a Kilmar update. You don't hear the left talking about it much anymore. It's got so bad that even the Democrats are like, ah, let's abandon this guy. But a second protective order has been released.

Not another one, right? So there was one in 2020. This one was in 2020. No, no, sorry, there was in 2021. This is another one from 2020, where his wife accuses Kilmar Abrego Garcia

of physical abuse, threatening her, says that she said she has a recording where he says if he kills her, nobody can do anything to him. The wife said, at one point, I'm afraid to be close to him. At this point, I'm afraid to be close to him.

I have multiple photos and videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he has left on me. He grabbed her by the hair in the car, dragged her out of the car, left her on the street, broke her son's tablet, broke the door to their house, punched the wall, brokepping, shoving, mental injury of a child, detaining against their will.

We're supposed to believe all women, right? And you had the Democrats standing with Kilmar. Pretty wild. So we have this list here of Kilmar, of the Maryland man, as we were told. Salvadorian citizen, illegal alien, MS-13 gang member. His wife's ex said he wanted custody of the kids because she is dating a gang member.

Accused multiple times by his wife of being a wife beater, domestic abuser. They also released the body camera footage of when he was pulled over in Tennessee, convicted of human trafficking, with eight people in his truck with no luggage

going from Texas to Maryland. Amazing. And we had sitting US senators go and visit him. The midterm ads are writing themselves. Why would so many people jump to this person's aid in the first place? Of course, TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, of course.

But there's something else there. It's anything Trump's for, they have to be against. Anything Trump's against, they have to be for. So if Trump's against this gang member, then the left has to be for him. They've tied themselves in a lot of knots over many different issues motivated by that force alone. But there's something else going on too. Allie Beth Stuckey, she wrote a book called Toxic Empathy.

She said, keep in mind that many liberals suffer from misplaced mothering, which explains their passion for destructive causes and people. They channel the love meant for children because more women are waiting longer

to have kids or families at all. So they had this natural love that's intended for children, but they've turned it into instead abstract issues and victims, social justice. This allows them to feel virtuous without having to suffer a real sacrifice. They're very protective of this dynamic. Thus their rage. When it's threatened,

this is what JD Vance was getting at remember during the campaign Really? I think the one controversial thing he said was he talked about the childless cat lady and Childless cat ladies were very offended But he said the u.s. Is being run by Democrats Corporate oligarchs and a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made

So they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. Remember when he said that? Or no, I don't think he said it during the campaign, I take it back, he said it, I think on Tucker Carlson, and it came out during the campaign, that's what it was. People found it and brought it up

and made him answer to that over and over again. So that is the latest with the Kilmar story. I hope the last update we ever give on the Kilmar, but there's just so much to learn about how this all operates and how the left is operating about this story. And we talked the other day, I don't know if we did a segment here about the lefts. We came up with the word malicious obtuseness with the tattoos on his fingers, the MS13, they're like, oh, I don't know. I'm pretty sure that's Photoshopped.

You're like, what's Photoshopped? Well, look, it says in Times New Roman font in black letters, size 12 above each symbol, MS13. That looks altered, therefore the photo's Photoshopped, therefore it's not real, therefore he's not in a gang, therefore he's a Maryland man and we need to bring him home. You're like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.

You're being obtuse, but not just up to shipping maliciously obtuse. You know it. So there's a lot of lessons, big political and life lessons to learn from this whole thing. But here's where I want to pivot to the Bible. People for a long time. And I heard it just the other day, have used the good Samaritan story as a justification to embrace gang members in America.

I guess I think that's the conclusion to the rest of that. Like we shouldn't deport illegal alien gang members because the good Samaritan. But maybe they don't use it for the gang members as much as just the good people. The otherwise good, the non gang members, the aliens, I guess, is who they're focused on. But I just want to use that as an excuse to talk about the Good Samaritan story and one of my favorite points of the story. And this point is that you're the bloodied man who needs saving. I think seeing it this way provides a lot of

clarity to the story. So the context is the man asks to Jesus, who is my neighbor? It's Luke 10. Then Jesus answered and said, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him and departed, leaving him half

dead.

So this road was known to be super dangerous. It had a nickname. The nickname was like the road of thieves or something like that. Now I've heard different analyses on this one. I'll let you decide what nuance you want to provide. This is William Barclay, mid-1900s. He said he was an obviously reckless and foolhardy character.

People seldom attempted the Jerusalem to Jericho road alone if they were carrying goods or valuables. Seeking safety in numbers, they traveled in convoys or caravans. This man had no one but himself to blame for the plight in which he found himself." And I got this quote from Spurgeon in a sermon he gave about this. He said, nobody could blame the poor Jew that when he was going down to Jericho about the business, about his business, the thieves beset him

and demanded his money, stripped him, left him half dead. How could he be blamed? It was to him a pure misfortune. I don't know. I don't know if it matters, but you can decide which of those two you prefer.

But you know the rest of the story, right? So the priest and Levite, both religious officials, they come across him first, and they had great excuses, I'm sure, not to help. Spurgeon said, I never knew a man, refused to help the poor,

who failed to give at least one admirable excuse. But the Samaritan then came, helped the Jew, and Jews and Samaritans hated each other. He had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and he set him on his own animal,

brought him to an inn and took care of him. So a couple of things. First, the Samaritan knew what to do, meaning he had the skills to take care of another person. That's an interesting detail. That's inspiring or convicting um also the samaritan put him on his animal which means he walked so

he really even that level of sacrifice he brought him presumably out of his way or at least the samaritan had somewhere else to go so he was at least sacrificing his time but now this guy was the top priority in his life. And then maybe my favorite part is he continued to take care of this man, even after he left, right? He didn't just hand him off to someone else.

He said, hey, I'll pay you back whatever resources you need to, for this man to get better, let me know and I'll pay you back. So you're the man, you're not the Samaritan, you're the, you're the bloodied up guy. You're the broken and bloodied and totally helpless because of your sin, man who needs saving.

Spurgeon said, I've set before you the highest example. And I shall conclude when I've said two things. Judge yourself, all ye my hearers. If you are hoping for salvation by your own works, look to what you must be throughout an entire life. If your works are to save you, you must love your God with all your heart and soul and strength and your neighbors in this Samaritan's fashion,

even as yourself and both of these without a single failure. Okay, so you have to be at, you do everything the Samaritan did all the time to everyone constantly never fail. Have you done this? Can you hope to do it perfectly? Okay, so if not, why do you risk your souls

on this frail skiff, this leaky sinking craft of your poor works, for you will never get to heaven therein. Lastly, you who are Christ's people are saved and you are not going to do these things in order to save yourself. No, the greater Samaritan has saved you.

Jesus has redeemed you, brought you into his church, put you under the care of his ministers, bidden us to take care of you and promise to reward us if we do so in the day when he comes. Seek then to be true followers of your Lord by practical deeds of kindness. And if you've been backwards in your gifts to help either the temporal or the spiritual needs of man, begin from this morning with generous hearts and God will bless you. Oh divine spirit, help us all be like Jesus.

Now we can each reflect on our individual roles of helping unrepentant, wife-beating gang members in El Salvador. But in the meantime, let us take the time to know that Jesus is the ultimate Samaritan, serving us, loving us all the way through, all the way through to the end, despite our sin,

and despite our being able to offer nothing in exchange for his love. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.

Trump signed an Executive Order last night requiring all truckers to be able to speak and read English. Obama stopped enforcing this law, but Trump said we're bringing it back. We talked to the co-founder of American Truckers United about their efforts to make this happen, and he was sure to give credit where it was due.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. I really mean that. Thank you for being here. I know you have a lot to do, a lot going on, a lot of options, a lot of things you can input into your brain. Why are you choosing this? There's got to be other things that are more entertaining than this, right? I don't want to give you any ideas, but maybe we should just start with the episode before you start actually thinking of things.

Now thank you for being a record number of downloads and all that so thank you very much. I want to spend more time on this. I want to dedicate more time to this so thank you for the encouragement. We had a guest today from the old SiriusXM radio show, who pretty much wrote this whole thing. He just handed this to me. He's like, oh, that's amazing.

Thank you, Shannon. So here's the story. About a month ago, we talked with the co-founder of this group called American Truckers United, and they had a very simple mission. No more truck drivers who can't speak English. That's dangerous.

And no more foreigners driving trucks in America, which is bringing down wages for American truck drivers. Makes sense? Now on that speaking English part, that's already against the law. The law says you have to be able to speak and

understand English in order to be a truck driver but in 2016 the Obama administration said that they are no longer going to enforce that law and they told states to stop enforcing that and since then there's been a lot of accidents or as my wife says wre, where people have died from truckers who shouldn't be on our highways. So we talked to him about a month ago,

and then wouldn't you know it, last night, Trump signed an executive order saying that we are now going to start enforcing that law again. This is a very important background thing to know. These executive orders, when you read them, they're not making new law.

They're enforcing laws that already exist. It's an order from the executive, an executive order, that says, hey, this is a priority now, and we're going to start doing this. I think of it kind of like a local DA. I talked to the San Diego DA when she was running, I was like, what do you do? And she explained it, and this always stuck with me. So a DA, district attorney, there's only so much time, money, and focus that you can put on things. So you have to have discretion as a district attorney

on where you're gonna put your priorities and your attention and money and people. So this DA said, we're gonna put more attention on human trafficking because there's a lot of that here. But when we do that, that means there's gonna be

a little less attention on carjacking. And if carjackings get out of control, well then we're gonna move some attention from here to go over there. Now, the George Soros, and that's all done, and then you elect the DA and you try to find someone

with good discretion and values that you have so that they can allot the limited resources in a way that you think is best for human flourishing in your city. The George Soros DAs came in and said, well we have discretion too, we're not going to arrest anyone or charge anyone, they'll be arrested maybe by cops, but we're not going to charge anyone for any shoplifting crimes, anything like that. So

that was the problem with that. They had so much discretion, but they used it like a bunch of fools and to hurt people. It's similar with the president. Now they have more time, money, and attention because it's the president of the United States, not a local DA's office, but they can decide which laws to enforce and which ones not to enforce. Now with Obama, it was ideological. They wanted more illegal aliens in this country. We need jobs for illegal aliens.

The trucking companies wanted to hire people at lower wages and worse conditions, right? Illegal alien will not protest about being on the road for a couple of weeks away from their family where maybe Americans would, maybe they don't have a family here at all.

So we had worse conditions. So they were okay with it, but the trucking companies were okay with it. And the Obama administration was okay with it. So they worked together and did this thing that hurt Americans.

And they said, you don't have to speak English anymore. Well, now Trump last night said, no, no, you do. That is the law. We are going to enforce the law that is already on the books. It was a great victory. So I said to Shannon, I said, man, this moved fast. And I don't know everything you did behind the scenes, obviously,

but just from our perspective, it seems like this happened pretty fast. How did that work? And then a couple of times in the interview, the very first thing he said, and then maybe once or twice in the interview, he mentioned praying. So at the end, I was like, okay, tell me about praying here. What are you talking about?

He said, well, it goes back to 2019. There was an illegal alien from Mexico who was driving a truck that killed a 64 year old man in Colorado. He was sentenced to a year in prison. Can you believe that? A year in prison. He served eight months, and then he was deported back to Mexico.

This would be his 13th deportation back to Mexico. You think, well, how did he ever get a license in the first place? It's all part of the corruption. So he comes back and he kills an American. Shannon said he's been praying ever since.

And he started this group and he said it was started in prayer. The main priority, their logo for American truckers United, the license plate says Psalm 34. So I said, Oh, Shannon just gave me the podcast. You Psalm 34 was written by David when he was in a cave hiding from King Saul, who wanted to kill

him.

The cave of a Dullam David and 400 men. They were not in a good place, physically, emotionally, spiritually, or spiritually. No, I take it back. That was the one place they were. That was good. Every other realm of life. It was not a good scene. So they're in this cave. I would have

pronounced it the cave of Adalim. But I watched this video of a guy who are a bunch of guys who went there in real life. So they'd been there. I got to go with them. Then they pronounce it a dullum. So they're in this cave as fugitives and the king's coming to kill them. And David wrote this psalm. Now if I were writing a little poem while in this situation, it probably wouldn't sound like this. Also it wouldn't be this artistic. This is one

of those poems where each sentence begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So A, B, C, but Hebrew. So imagine the horrible situation that David's in and here's Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear of it and be glad. What? James Boyce, the theologian, said, he may have been hiding in a dismal cave, but this psalm tells us that his heart he was hiding in the Lord. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from my fears. Well, hold on. He's not king yet. What's the, he's in a cave. Now he's

made it out of trouble a few times where he just left the city of Gath where he pretended to be insane. So he got out of that bind, but he's no way in the free. And here he is delivered from all my fears. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him." Again, this was the main psalm of this group, American Truckers United. This was Shannon's main comfort. Oh fear the Lord, you his saints. There is no want to those who fear him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. Check out this wisdom here.

Come, you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life? And loves many days that he may see good. OK, so you want one to live a nice life, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.

Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. Good as that. It's good for raising kids right there. But ourselves, of course, to the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and he, his ears are open to their cry.

The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and save such as have a contrite spirit. That ties into Ed from North Carolina, who we talked about yesterday. He had a broken heart, a spiritually broken heart in a good way to contrite spirit when

he was confronted with his selfishness. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. Wow, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He guards all his bones.

Not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked. And those who hate the righteous shall be condemned. The Lord redeems the soul of his servants, and none of those who trust in righteous shall be condemned. The Lord redeems the soul of his servants and none of those who trust in him shall be condemned." Man. So it's Psalm 34. That's what Shannon brought up. And I mentioned him, I said, oh we just played this clip the other day of Tucker Carlson with Bukele in El Salvador.

It was Bukele's, I think, inaugural, and Tucker was saying, hey, I listened to your speech, and you said we have a three-point plan to save the economy. And Tucker says, oh, you know, I'm thinking, you know, what's the first one?

Like start a federal reserve or lower taxes or whatever. And the first point of the plan was seek God's wisdom. And Bukede said, well, yes, of course. What else would be the first point of the plan? Where would you prefer we start? Name a better place to start. So I said that to Shannon, he said, oh, yeah, yeah.

That's Matthew 6, 33. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Now that all these things, Jesus was just done telling people, don't worry about what to eat, don't worry about what you drink, don't worry about what you wear. He says, your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Seek, don't let these worldly

things, don't worry about it. Seek first the kingdom of God all these things. Seek, don't like these worldly things, don't worry about it. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Seek first the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God. Seek first the kingdom of God. It's like, yeah, is the podcast broken?

No, no, you gotta say it a few times before it clicks. It's so funny that the first time God is like, yeah, what's the podcast broken? No, no, you got to say it a few times before it clicks. It's so funny that the first time you're like, oh, it's a nice one. Second time. Okay, I got it. Third time. Yeah, I know.

I seek first the kingdom of God and eventually it's like, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess like finally click seek first the kingdom of God. When? Later? At the end? If things work out? If they don't? Nope. See, not at the end. Seek first. Seek first before anything else. Seek what? The kingdom of God. Seek it first. And His righteousness, the very first thing. Seek first. No, really, it's being for real here. It's not a, it's not an expression. It's not a nice little saying. Seek first the kingdom of God. If you need to

hear it a few more times, you can rewind the podcast about 30 seconds. Keep hearing me say it over and over again, but let's pray it over and over again. Let's say it over and over again. Write it out over and over again. Let's say it over and over again. Write it out over and over again. Put it on a piece of paper. Put it by your door. Put it on your door. Put it over your door. As the reminder of what we need to seek first.

As the reminder of what we need to seek first.

The Kingdom of God. His righteousness.