4min chapter

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Positive World, Negative World, and Christian Nationalism with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen

Life and Books and Everything

CHAPTER

The Move to Anything Goes Moral Relativivism

Colin: I don't see the move into negative world if we use that terminology to one where we're moving from into licentiousness. It just seems what's changed is we've entered a whole different radically different form of Christianity, which is equally problematic because again, it's all law without gospel, without grace. He says ministry should look more similar to how it always has rather than more dissimilar. "I think people are still sinners. They still need to be born again"

00:00
Speaker 2
But again, but it took its version of legalism and law with a Christian kind of perspective on it and just established it among the elite culture outside of the church. So the concern is I don't think we're moving back, we're moving into a situation where we're just leaving behind Christianity and we're moving toward anything goes. It just seems what's changed is we've entered a whole different radically different form of Christianity, which is equally problematic because again, it's all law without gospel, without grace. Now you can push back on that. But that's how I see that. Well, I
Speaker 1
think I largely agree with what you're affirming there. I think my disagreement would be whether what you're disagreeing with is not something I think I'm saying, and maybe other people are saying it. I don't see the move into negative world if we use that terminology to one where we're moving from into licentiousness. Okay, we've always had that. Or we're moving into anything goes moral relativism. Quite the contrary, I think moral relativism was a stopping ground in the 90s and 2000s as we moved on to, it's not relativism. Twitter is not a place of moral relativism. It's a place of hard moral absolutes. I've referenced so many times Wilford McCleay's article on the infinite extensibility of guilt. So I think absolutely we have lots of law, meaning moral demands upon people without any notion of forgiveness, without any means of grace or real reconciliation. It's just all penance. It's all groveling for your indulgence. So I agree with all of that. And I think it's a mistake if Christians think the boogeyman out there is just anything goes morality. No, it's quite the opposite. Where maybe we disagree is I do think there is a, so here's what I'd say, there's a change in the culture, but there's not a change in human nature. And that means fundamentally ministry should look more similar to how it always has rather than more dissimilar. And maybe that's a helpful distinction. No, I would agree with that, Kevin.
Speaker 2
And I think that's why I would argue against people on both sides, that we don't need a radical winsomeness that has to bend over backwards on the left. But we also don't need Christian nationalism on the right to placate that side either. But again, we're doing the third way stuff. So we better be careful. Well, I'm, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1
saying that what is useful to real, okay, it's a truism. Everything's always changing. The culture is always changing. Again, this is anecdotal. You talk to people doing campus ministry. I mean, they say something really, it is a lot different than when we were in college. It's a lot different than even 10 or 15 years ago. Now, as a pastor, I say, well, does that mean we do things a whole lot different in the church? I don't think it does. I think people are still sinners. They still need to be born again. They still need the word of God. They still need us to preach and to pray and to minister to them. But writ large, a lot of this has to do with a posture, a culture to the posture to the culture. And many of the people, here's my packaging, many of the people who would be most strongly advocating for a winciness toward the culture are often not very wincim towards other Christians who disagree with their assessment of that culture. Now, here's what I'll do the other side, Colin. Yes, it's certainly the case that too many people, let's say on the right, have that flight 93 mentality, or that says, you know, this comes out just in that podcast you mentioned, at least as Kornaki tells the story that that Bob Michael was too much of just a nice guy in Newt Gingrich came along and said, no, we're not going to be the nice guys anymore.

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