Render Unto Caesar

I do think there’s a difference between being anti-Christian and being anti-Christian nationalism. You know, being pro-secularism does not mean you’re anti-Christian. And if we have not made that clear, then that’s on us. And we should do a better job of doing that because…

I agree. I think you should.

Yeah.

I think you all need to do a better job of that.

Yeah.

Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. It’s a crazy time in these here United States of America. And in order to talk about that, we have a very special guest. We are bringing on an actual—like, you know, we’ve been talking about politics in America a little bit, and we’ve actually got a politician in America. We’ve got Representative Eric Swalwell. Welcome to Data Over Dogma. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks, Dan. Dan, I appreciate you having me on.

You are—you are the Democrat representative from California’s 14th district. The fighting 14th. How are things out in the fighting 14th?

You know, we are in the Bay Area, so we have been spared by the wildfires, but most of us have friends, family in Southern California. And so, you know, just a lot of gratitude to the firefighters who are on the front lines. But I’ll be honest, it’s just awful to hear the stories of friends. We have ten friends in our family who lost everything. And so the scale of it is just beyond imagination. And, and right now, my experience is that if you have—if you know somebody in Los Angeles that did not lose their home in Altadena or the Palisades, they know somebody who did. It’s really very few degrees of separation and the amount of time it’s going to take to, you know, rebuild, you know, one of the most beautiful places on the planet is also disheartening.

It’s really rough. One of the founders of the podcasting network that we are affiliated with lost his home. So our hearts go out.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, everybody out there, we brought you on to talk about some other things. Though it is, you know, our show is dedicated to the Bible, the scholarly study of the Bible.

Yeah.

You are a—a practicing Christian?

I am.

And, and that may surprise some people on the right. I don’t know, the right wing right now in America thinks they own Christianity and I think that it’s very interesting when—when a Democrat comes on, you know, to talk about that and about the—you know, this week, as we record, we’ve had a whole bunch of craziness happen where, you know, with—with Bishop Budde.

Budde.

I don’t know. I don’t know how she says her name. You know, she gave that—that talk at that prayer service at the National Cathedral and called for what seemed like a very normal thing, which is mercy to those who are in fear and, you know, to—to the stranger, to the—she—you know, she talked about LGBTQ people.

Yeah. The weary traveler, which is going back to my Sunday school days in Algona, Iowa. Going to our Lutheran community church was one of the first lessons that you’re taught.

Yeah. Yeah. So it—it feels very odd to me when someone like—look, I don’t—I don’t believe that Donald Trump—that Christianity means much to Donald Trump. So when he called for an apology and said all sorts of nasty things about her, that didn’t surprise me. But when Speaker Johnson tweeted that—that she was—that what she said was shameful, I thought that that was a little bit nuts. Do you—what—what are your thoughts about that?

Yeah. And these guys are pretty fragile for a gang that ran on free speech. You know, their—their egos seem, you know, quite precious. And, you know, I sat in the room on Monday where Donald Trump was sworn in, and I listened to Donald Trump’s speech, and I listened to, you know, Reverend Graham’s invocation, and I didn’t agree with every part of it, but I—I took it like a man. Like, that’s their right. It’s their right to say it. I, you know, I didn’t, you know, whine or complain about it. And so that, to me, is also quite shocking that they could be so publicly bothered that, one, it tells me what kind of leader they are, and two, it tells me what kind of country they want us to live in, which is a country that’s free from dissent.

And I thought it was particularly odd to hear this from Speaker Johnson in light of the fact that one of the first things he publicly said following the announcement of his appointment as speaker was that if you want to hear my worldview, just look in the Bible, and there it is. And yet took significant umbrage with a person who’s not a politician but is the bishop of the National Cathedral, who was giving a sermon in their church, and she simply offered a plea for mercy, as if the political spectrum is okay to be influenced by Christianity, but the religious spectrum cannot be influenced by Christianity if there are politicians present. And I heard one, Ben Shapiro, say that it would, it would be abandoning his entire political agenda to show mercy to the trans kids who fear for their lives and undocumented immigrants, which.

It makes me wonder if the Christianity that is practiced by these folks is more concerned with praying on the street corner than it is for the second great commandment. But it seems like power is being worshiped an awful lot more regularly than is Jesus. But I wanted to know something. We have spoken with some folks who are actors living in Hollywood and you hear all kinds of things about what kind of people live and work in Hollywood and things like that. But I’m curious. Behind the scenes you must know and engage with folks across the political spectrum in and outside of Congress who many of them are probably believers of one kind or another. Do you feel like religion is, is something that helps to bridge that gap or is it really as dichotomous, is it really as divided within the halls of Congress as a lot of these public comments make it sound?

Right now we are in this era where, you know, Christianity among my colleagues, you know, is not a religion of choice. It’s the only choice; that’s how they are approaching this. That’s why I joined the Freethought Caucus, which is made up of a bunch of colleagues of mine, some who are nontheists and then many who practice different faiths. But they want us to be a secular country that separates, you know, the government from any faith. And so the opportunity for us to have, you know, an interfaith dialogue or, you know, a bipartisan Bible study, I think has been lost because of a Christian nationalism worldview that starts, as you said, at the very top from the Speaker of the House.

Yeah, yeah. Speaker Johnson recently, you know, in signing a, or when, when this House passed a bill about trans girls and women in sports, he cited Genesis as being the reason why. As being his, his reason why that would be okay. As though Genesis—and he was very convinced that Genesis said, you know, that there were only two genders and that Genesis had anything at all to say about trans people.

Yeah, it’s Genesis, not gender.

Cis, right. And he, and he literally said, he said, when he was asked about it, he said, well, it goes back to the first book, Genesis: male and female he made them. I’m not sure there’s another interpretation, but everybody’s open to interpreting scripture however they will. I just think when, when you hear your colleagues saying that there’s only one way that you can do Christianity and then trying to inject that Christianity into their politics, how does that—how does that hit you? How do you respond to that?

Yeah, and by the way, I was raised in a very conservative household, a very Republican household. But Christianity and how it was projected to me from my parents and grandparents was primarily, you know, about love over hate and the values, you know, from the teachings of Christ and particularly what those values meant, you know, for the less fortunate and to never, you know, alienate individuals because of a difference they may have with you. And so that—that bothers me a lot. And frankly, that’s why I don’t, you know, lead with my personal faith, because if I’m being honest, maybe I should talk about it more. But if I’m being honest, I’m so disgusted by those who weaponize their faith to achieve political goals.

And yeah, I just have never been comfortable with that. You know, I went to Campbell University for my first two years in college, a Christian college. I played Division 1 soccer on a scholarship. It’s in Buies Creek, North Carolina. It’s a Southern Baptist school. And, you know, I was around, you know, just a number of individuals, you know, who had very, very deep, you know, conservative faith and interpretations of the Bible. And I was okay, you know, being around that. But what I’m never going to be okay with is to suggest that there can only be one faith or that your faith is a justification, you know, for the denigration of others.

I also grew up in a—in a pretty conservative, religiously and socially conservative household. And my—and my parents have—have since pivoted significantly. But in fact, there’s a degree to which they kind of drove my own radicalization, so to speak, in addition to a bunch of other experiences. But I wonder if when you think back on this, do you think of yourself as being radicalized or do you think of yourself as maintaining the same perspective as the scope of your experience in the world grew and you just kind of parted ways from—from the conservative perspectives that worked within a more parochial setting?

I was the first of my family to go to college, and I transferred after two years from Campbell University to Maryland, the University of Maryland, which—which, Go Terps!—which has one of the largest Jewish populations on campus in the country. And to just find housing, I found a fraternity house that took me on as a boarder for a summer internship, and they agreed that I could stay in the house once I transferred as long as I would join the fraternity. And it was a Jewish engineering fraternity, but they were not hitting their numbers. And so they were willing to take on this non-Jewish, lower-the-bar, non-engineering major. And so I learned a lot about that faith. And so just being in college and being away from, you know, how I was raised just opened me up to the importance of, you know, dialogue, you know, in an interfaith environment. And now I represent the largest Muslim district outside of Detroit.

And so I have, you know, interacted with, you know, the imams at our mosques in—in my district. And so it’s only, I think, helped me be a better representative.

It’s so important, isn’t it, to—to hit home the idea that all of these people are meant to be representing all of Americans. And yet that’s not what we see. You know, if you—if you hear them talk, everybody in the country is a—you know, is a conservative Christian except some, like, fringe outliers, some freaks that are out on the sides. But like—like you said, I mean, your district is special. You—you know, majority Asian district and you know, a heavy percentage of Hispanic people and all that sort of thing. But they’re all supposed to represent all of us in some way.

That’s right.

Or at very least honor the fact that this is a country of a multiplicity of creeds, beliefs, religions, all of those sorts of things. And I can tell you as someone who isn’t Christian, I don’t think that the non-Christians are feeling very honored or feeling very represented right now.

You know, we’ve got—they look at these policies now and they fear that it’s no longer freedom of choice and that in their kids’ schools there will be a Christian nationalist indoctrination. And I understand why they would fear that is the case. You have states right now that are going to require the Bible to be taught in classrooms, but at the exclusion of—of any other book of faith. And again, I understand why people are bothered by that. I’m okay with any classroom teaching the historic value of the Bible and what we can draw from that and how it’s influenced cultures and civilizations. But there’s also other books that have been quite influential for religions that have, you know, over a billion people who follow them. And so those are important too.

And I think there’s a—particularly in places like Oklahoma, where there’s now a requirement that there be a Bible physically present in every classroom, which obviously serves an iconic purpose, but no educational purpose whatsoever. And the rhetoric I hear from the folks who defend those kinds of policies always leans heavily into revisionist history that sees the Bible and the Ten Commandments as—as foundational to our Constitution and to our country, which—which is really just taking Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments and the rhetoric of the early 1950s and retrojecting it over our own foundation. And it baffles me how historically illiterate an awful lot of people who walk the halls of the—the temples in Washington, D.C. are. And I’m curious what—what the—like, there’s—I grew up just outside of D.C. in Gaithersburg. In fact, I had uncles that went to—played football for Maryland.

But I—I always imagined that being in those places, the—the history would just be thick in the air. And I’m curious how—how—how much work they have to do to misunderstand and misrepresent the—the history within which they—they walk and work every day. Is there concern for this revisionist history among folks you work with?

Jared Huffman, I would say, is the thought leader on the Democratic side who has brought in professors and scholars in the area of religion and that clash between the Ten Commandments—important in my personal life and the personal lives of many Americans—but with the First Amendment of the United States, and that we have to take an oath when we are sworn in to defend the Constitution and faithfully execute its laws, and that the First Amendment would not allow the Ten Commandments to predominate over the laws of the United States. And so Jared Huffman has done a great job, and I think he’d probably be a good guest for the show. I’ll recommend it to him. But what you speak about, inconsistencies, particularly to Scripture: This week in Washington, the former President of the United States promised to pardon the sentences of 1600 individuals who committed the violent acts on January 6th.

And as the son of a police officer and a brother to two police officers and a former prosecutor, I know that Scripture teaches us through Matthew that blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God. And the peacemakers were not respected this week. And I’ve talked to many of the January 6 officers; over 150 of them were injured. Many would go on to lose their lives or take their own lives and to see that act. I don’t think you can derive anything if you think the Bible should guide everything we do in government. I don’t know where you would look in the Bible to suggest that 1600 individuals who stormed the Capitol should be released. And I do worry that a man who would release 1600 of his most violent supporters would also put in jail 1600 of his most vocal enemies.

It seems possible. That definitely seems possible. We’ll have to see on that one. I think there are so many things that I want to ask you, but we’re running out of time. So I think I do want to talk a bit about, and we’ve touched on this, but I want to talk more about the idea of secular government and how it seems like many of your colleagues don’t buy into that idea. They don’t buy into the idea that our government is meant specifically and overtly to be a place that is secular, that is divided from religious practice. How can we, what can we do to get back to that set of ideals? And how can we hold some of your colleagues accountable who are not holding true to that ideal?

I think it’s important for my colleagues not to be perceived as anti-Christian. That’s really important. And that’s in part why I wanted to come on your podcast, because I do think there’s a difference between being anti-Christian and being anti-Christian nationalism. And being pro-secularism does not mean you’re anti-Christian. And if we have not made that clear, then that’s on us and we should do a better job of doing that.

I agree. I think you should.

Yeah, I think even my non-practicing or nontheist colleagues, I don’t believe they are seeking the minimization of Christianity or erasing its effects in our culture or our lives. But if that’s the perception in the Christian community, then it doesn’t matter. And so you can understand why some in the Christian community, even though they may not buy into Christian nationalism and they may not buy into a government that is led by the Bible rather than the Constitution, they may see it as black and white. They think the Democrats are just absent of any faith or they don’t believe that I have a right to my faith. And they may not agree with everything that Donald Trump is saying, but at least he’s defending faith. So I think we have to recognize that that is sometimes the mindset out there and make sure we reject any notion of that.

Yeah, I think one of my specializations that I wrote my doctoral dissertation on was the cognitive science of religion. So I study why people believe what they believe and how it informs a lot of their identity politics. And I see an awful lot in the rhetoric that I see coming from Christian nationalism as this us versus them mentality. And a lot of the identity markers of Christianity are kind of bubbling to the surface as means of what I call costly signaling.

And I, I am concerned that an awful lot of people see religion not so much as a way of life, but as an implement, a tool for advancing their own access to power and structuring power in ways that serve their own needs and interests. And there was a very wise man thousands of years ago who said that the people who are best set up to exercise power are the people who do not want it. And it has always been my worry that Washington is inhabited by an awful lot of people who thirst for and worship power. What has been your sense participating in, in government about the relationship of that thirst for power to a lot of the decisions that are being made there?

Yeah, well, I can speak for myself personally. My relationship with faith is my connection to God, personal connection to God. And I fear that many of my Republican colleagues, their relationship to faith is defined, you know, by a connection to power and a means of achieving political goals. And I’m fascinated by this idea because it’s often the alibi that they use to defend the acts of Donald Trump, that he is a King David-like figure, an imperfect vessel. And so, you know, for, you know, their, their policies in various areas to be executed, they need this imperfect vessel. And therefore the means, the end justifies the means to get there. And that, that’s very, very dangerous because I, I frankly call BS on Donald Trump having any interest, you know, in a deeper understanding of the Christian faith; I think he recognizes that they see him as this imperfect vessel and he has masterfully weaponized that.

And on our side, we have not done a good enough job of aligning with the faith community. And so, again, that’s a little bit of shame on us, but that is very dangerous when colleagues of mine of faith are so willing to, to make excuses for him because they see him as the means to get to their political end.

Well, I think, I think we’ll have to close it on that note. Thank you so much, Representative Swalwell, for joining us. We appreciate it. Maybe, you know, hopefully things can—we have hope, but not a lot of hope for the upcoming four years.

I’m a father of a seven-year-old, a six-year-old and a three-year-old, and I see it as a parent as being contractually optimistic. You have to be optimistic on their behalf whether you want to or not.

All right, well get out there and make our optimism worthwhile, will you?

I will. All right, Dan, Dan. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your time, Representative.

Well, Dan, hopefully people didn’t think that that was the end of the podcast. We do have, we do have more. It was very nice of Representative Swalwell to join us.

One day we are going to end on the 30 minute mark. We’re just going to be like, well, see everybody and hey, it’s our show.

We can do whatever we want. But we try, we try to maximize the, the value for our, for you, our listeners, viewers.

Yeah. So today is not that day, as the great one said.

Indeed. So we thought that since we—let’s keep with a theme, man. Let’s keep it, let’s keep things political on this week. This week we’re going to do a chapter and verse. And this week’s chapter and verse is—well, we got a few different chapters and verses, but I wanted to, to talk about sort of what the Bible has to say about local government. It became an issue, especially in the New Testament, that Jesus was asked about a number of times, including, or at

least asked at least once. But the story is repeated a number of times.

Well, there’s that, absolutely. And that story, the story that you’re referencing, as you put it, when I asked you for what scripture, you said, well, the first time it appears is in Mark. So we’re looking at Mark, chapter 12, and then down just a little bit in verse 13. This is the story of Jesus being asked about whether or not they should pay taxes. Yeah, to a leader.

Yeah, yeah. And it was. Well, really, the, the idea here is to try to trap Jesus in the NRSVue. It says they sent him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said.

Those sneaky Herodians. Yeah, they’re always trying. They’re always setting traps.

Yeah, they’re. And, and not the, not the fun Mouse Trap game that we used to love when we were kids that nobody ever actually played. You just set it up and then

just set it up. Yeah, there was a game attached to that in some way, wasn’t there? I don’t remember a single rule.

Yeah, but so Pharisees and Herodians would be the. The Pharisees were a little less willing to go along with Rome. They were a little more radical in that regard. The Sadducees, because they were tied up with the administration of the temple and because that was tied up with Rome, they were a little more in bed with Greco-Roman society. The Pharisees tended not to be. But here they’re being teamed up with Herodians, which would be Jewish folks who are. Who, who, like Herod the Great. He’s their, their great representative. He’s gonna make Judea great again, basically. And these are. And because these are the Jewish folks who are like, he’s our guy, they’re calling them Herodians.

Okay. So they said, yeah, I didn’t know that that’s. Who, who that was. You know, while you’re into explaining who

are the Pharisees, so the Pharisees are one of the main schools of thought within Judaism, one of the main streams of tradition. They are the ones who end up becoming what. What becomes Rabbinic Judaism. They are the rabbis that, that end up establishing Rabbinic Judaism once the temple is destroyed around 70 CE. The Sadducees are the folks from the priestly families who are, like I said, tied up with temple administration. The Pharisees don’t have that kind of access to power, but they’re the ones who oversee the training of. Of scribes and, and the training of rabbis. And, and they’re the ones in charge of the synagogues and things like that. And so they’re, they’re. Go ahead.

They seem, they seem. The Pharisees seem to be used in much, many of the New Testament narratives as, as a foil or as a sort of almost the bad guy coming in to, to challenge Jesus and to trick him and to, to, you know, it, it’s, it’s almost like, yeah, it’s. I, it feels, it feels very much like they’re the antagonists to, to our, our protagonist.

Yes, they, they are definitely set up as the antagonists in, in a lot of ways. Now not all the ways. There are, there are several upstanding Pharisees in, in the Gospels and then Paul was, was a Pharisee as well. But they are represented as in a negative light in the, in the Gospels. Now once you get to John, they’re all kind of homogenized. John just refers to the Jews in a very negative way. And so there. We do have to be careful about this. Sometimes people use Pharisaical as, as a pejorative, as an insult. And that’s quite antisemitic because like I said, the Pharisees are, are the group that would become Rabbinic Judaism, right. Which is the main thrust, the main tradition stream of tradition of Judaism down to today. So we, we don’t truck with, with using Pharisee pejoratively on the Data over Dogma podcast, but in this story, the, the Pharisees with the Herodians and, and you can imagine these are, these are the guys who don’t like being sent out together, elbowing each other the whole time and not wanting to, to let the other speak.

And they, and they came to, and, and the idea here is, is they want to try to trap him and have him say something that they could represent as being anti-Roman because they want to, they want to have an excuse to accuse him to the Romans. And they came to him and said to him, teacher, we know that you’re sincere and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. And, and so here they’re, they’re buttering

him up there, they’re baiting him.

Yeah, yeah. And, and they say, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Because they want him to be like, screw Caesar, right? And then they can be like, he said it, he said it, he said it. And they can get the centurions to go and down to, to arrest them. And, and then in verse 15 it says, but knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, why are you putting me to the test? So letting them know, I know what you’re trying to get at you, you non-clever little foxes. And he says, bring me a denarius and let me see it.

was quite widespread and quite famous. And so that’s almost certainly what coin the author had in mind here. And this coin has an inscription on it. On one side, it has the—it has Tiberius crowned with a laurel, and the—there’s an inscription around him, and it’s abbreviated, but it says, Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, and then Augustus, and—and the idea is son of Augustus himself. Augustus—Augustus being the—this imperial title. So this is an image of a human ruler that is also calling him divine. So—

Right.

So there’s a lot of—yeah, there’s a lot of—of theological significance to what’s going on with this coin. And then the back, it says Pontifex Maximus, or high priest. And then there’s a picture of a seated lady who probably represents Pax, the embodiment of the Roman Empire. The Pax Romana. So—or peace. Roman peace. Right. Yeah. And so they brought one. They brought a denarius. He was like, give me—give me one of these denarii. Let me see one of these. And then, you know, they’re probably like, I just got a couple of pennies. And they probably—it probably took them a while to—to get one, but they bring him one. And he said, whose head is on this? And whose title? And they answered, Caesar’s. Jesus said to them, give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. And they were utterly amazed at him.

So you can imagine their sphinxy riddle. It doesn’t seem like that’s utterly amazing, but—

Yeah, no, no, they’re—they’re easily amazed. But you—you can imagine him just hucking this back at them, right?

Yeah. What he should have done was just taken the denarius and walked away. Thank you.

Done a little magic trick.

Okay. I put the denarius. Boom, it’s gone.

What denarius? I didn’t see any denarius.

Okay. So, I mean, the—the—the implications of this beyond just sort of do—do we pay our taxes? Yes, we do. It seems like there is a larger implication to this story. It’s repeated in multiple Gospels—Gospels. Thank you.

Synoptic Gospels. Yes.

The words are not coming to my brain. But yes, it’s repeated in the Synoptic Gospels, which means that it’s got to, you know, presumably it is of enough importance that all of these authors thought to put it into their story.

What.

What do you think it is beyond just pay your taxes to the Romans?

Well, I—I think it’s also just supposed to be—mainly, I think it’s a—just a demonstration of how Jesus managed to—managed to wriggle out of their little rhetorical snare. Just another example of, you know, if you imagine like an old—old Looney Tunes cartoon where you have Wile E. Coyote, like, there’s a scene where he strapped himself to a rocket and—and fires it off and, you know, hits the side of the mountain and he’s all charred and everything. And then you just start a new scene where now he’s got some roller skates or something, and he’s—right. Like, it’s—it’s just vignette after vignette of them trying to—trying to foil him and trying to trap him, and him every time just deftly sidestepping their—their attack. And so I—I think that’s also rhetorically in play here. But—but yeah, the idea is—is probably also that, hey, we gotta live in this empire. So, you know, we can’t be isolationists.

We can’t be—we can’t be revolutionaries because that’s gonna cut our movement quite short. We can’t win against these guys by—by just, you know, giving them the finger every time. And—and so I—I think the idea is just, hey, we can—we can live in this world. We can, you know, they have the power of—of life or death over us, so we can do what they—what they require, as long as it’s not compromising our principles.

I think—I—I wonder if—and I—I, you know, I was trying—I was baiting you for this, but—but you didn’t take the bait. I—I wonder if, you know, in light of our conversation with Representative Swalwell, like, there is, to my mind, when I read that, I feel like there is an undertone of—of a separation between your spiritual life and just sort of daily life. And, you know, being subject to a government is fine being so.

Yeah, I think that passage.

I think that plays into it that. That we got to live in this world. So obviously there’s a. There’s a. A civic dimension to our lives that, that we can’t just entirely neglect. We’ve still got to participate in this thing. And, and what’s interesting, though, is the contrast of this with the Book of Revelation , because you’ll recall that part of the Book of Revelation is, is talking about receiving the mark and the mark is in the right hand or it’s on the forehead, and you can’t buy or sell without the mark. And there’s an argument to make that this, this imagery represents the, the intersection of a bunch of different ideas. You’ve got counterfeit ritual. But one of the things that the mark probably represents is precisely Roman coinage, because it has the, the image of Nero, who is supposed to be the beast, and it has the name of Nero, and you would exchange it with your right hand, and you can’t buy or sell without that Roman coinage.

So I think there’s a degree to which the Book of Revelation is kind of going against this and say, no, we are going to be separatists. We are going to entirely cut ourselves off, and we’re going to be isolationists and we’re going to go out into Ruby Ridge in Idaho and we’re going to be, you know, what, what do they call them? Sovereigns, whatever.

Sovereign citizens.

Citizens. Yeah. This is where. This is our own country and, and we’re going to mint our own money and all. Like, there’s a degree to which Revelation is kind of leaning into that. But I think the, the gospel authors here are like, man, you got to make a living. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta, gotta play this game well.

And, and there’s a lot of people with varying beliefs all around us, and we’re all, you know, we all got to get along. We all, you know, it’s, I think, I think part of the idea. I mean, I guess just last week we talked about people very much not getting along with the people around them and instead just, you know, genociding them completely. I tend to think that the, that the getting along version is better than the genociding version.

Yeah, yeah. And. And we even have. And I think Paul does this as well. And, and this brings up another passage that an awful lot of people like to talk about when it comes to the legitimacy of government, and that’s Romans 13 . And, and I would argue that this passage is doing the exact same thing because we got Romans 13:1 from the NRSVUE. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. And those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whosoever resists authority resists what God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I’ve heard people sort of echo that idea when their guy is in power, and suddenly that idea completely disappears from their theology the second the person that they didn’t vote for gets into power. It’s a. It’s a sticky wicket, that idea.

Yeah, it is. It is a very. It is a wicket that very much sticks. And. And we talked a little bit about Mike Johnson with Representative Swalwell, and he’s one who cited Romans 13:1 . And somebody was like, well, does that mean that God wanted President Biden in power? And he had to kind of. He hemmed and hawed a little bit and finally, finally had to be like, sure, whatever.

Sure. Yeah, I guess so. Because it does. I mean, really, doesn’t it mean that? It means whoever’s in power is supposed to be.

Well, and. And I. I think it is like, yes, that’s. That’s one way to read it. I think it can be maladapted, however, to be used to mean you’re not allowed to question the powers that be. And this is where I think we get into a misreading. And we’ve talked about this before on the channel, but keep in mind, this is. This is Paul who thinks the world is going to end too soon for anybody to even think. Think about getting pregnant.

Yeah.

Like, it’s coming. Don’t change anything. It’s like, don’t get a haircut. Don’t have.

Tight.

Don’t move. Yeah, it’s in the mail. And he’s writing to Rome, to the people in Rome, and he’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, Rome’s. Rome’s cool. Yeah, instituted by God. That’s the only. That’s the only kind of power you have. That’s the only authority you have.

He’s.

He’s just. And Paul didn’t think that there would be a bunch of other empires that came after Rome. Paul wasn’t worried about, well, what does this mean about this other president over here or this king over here, or this member of Parliament over here. I don’t even, I can’t even remember what they call the, the head member of Parliament. Oh, my gosh.

Prime Minister’s the phrase you’re looking for.

Yeah, that is the phrase that I was fumbling around looking for. So Paul had no, wasn’t thinking about that. He was not making some kind of universal eternal declaration that all leaders across all time and space are always instituted by God. Paul is just making the Romans happy.

Right.

So, so it’s, it’s a ridiculous thing to try to leverage in order to say you’re not allowed to question authority. And it’s, it’s never consistently leveraged anyway. It is always, right, very selectively leveraged to, to prop up your guy.

Well, and that, and, and yeah, we’ve pointed out the problem with that because then when someone else on the other side says, okay, samesies for our guy, it’s not gonna go well, so it can’t mean what they’re. You know, when someone deploys that scripture as a, as a means of saying, you know, you have to live, our guy has impunity bestowed upon him from God. That cannot be what this means. It’s, it’s, it doesn’t make any sense to have that because they would never, ever allow that. That was the case, you know, for, for, for the opposition.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, it’s used to gloss over all kinds of problems with leaders who are serial adulterers and rapists and criminals and things like that.

You don’t have to list all of Trump’s qualifications.

But, you know, if it were 30 years ago and the question were related to one of Monica Lewinsky’s acquaintances.

Yes.

The argument would be exactly opposite because the priority is always structuring power. It’s, it’s never subordinating yourself to the principles that you assert. It’s always using principle, whatever principles you can to validate your own power. Yeah. Which, which unfortunately is, is something that in the Bible they so frequently speak directly against.

Well, I mean, as we’ve learned, the, I mean, the Bible is so easily deployable. You, you, no matter what point you’re trying to make, you’re, if you’re, if you’re trying to structure power around the Bible, you’re probably going to be able to find some passages that will support you.

Yeah.

And I think that’s part of the problem is that like people, these, especially these politicians who are in power should not be allowed. We should be holding them to account for deploying biblical, for deploying scripture as a means of saying this is why it’s okay. You know, as we, we mentioned earlier, when Mike Johnson passed the, the bill forbidding trans girls in, in sports, in women’s sports, he, he cited a Bible verse that is silly to cite.

Yeah.

But. But he used it as a means of trying to shut down the conversation and trying not to be held to account. And I think that that is the big problem with allowing and, and even, and you know lately encouraging biblical arguments from our representatives, from our politicians.

Yeah, there’s the, the Bible is the, the most flexible choose your own adventure book that’s out there and unfortunately, far too many people are, are choosing the path of, of being the villain and in that choose your own adventure. And, and yeah, that they should be. They should be called out for that and, and their hypocrisy should be exposed. And, and you know that that happens. That always happens to one degree or another. It’s, it never happens in a way that’s authoritative. It very rarely ever happens in a way that’s louder than the support, which is, is part of the problem. We’ve got far too many people who are willing to, to mortgage their, their relationship with their religion and with the Bible for a mess of, of political pottage. So yeah, it’s, it’s a shame that, that far too many people are worshiping power and confusing it for Jesus or God.

But yeah, I don’t see it going away anytime soon, unfortunately.

Well, there you go. Get, get out there, friends, and, and, and campaign against ’em. Get, get involved in your politics until, until we get a secular government back. That’s what I would say.

Yeah, indeed.

It doesn’t even have to be a left versus right thing. Just. Yeah, just. It’s really important to have to have a secular government.

And there, there are a lot of positions there. There are a lot of things you can do in local government that are not even where they don’t even ask. You don’t run based on party.

Yeah.

And so you can go get involved in a lot of different ways in local government. Go be on your, your school community council. I was on my daughter’s council for a while. Got to see how the sausage is made. And

you don’t want to see it.

Yeah, that was, that was some rough sausage. But you can do all kinds of things to, to get involved. Yeah.

Go, go give a satanic prayer at

a,

at a, at a political place that shouldn’t have prayer at all. Yeah. All right, well, that’s it for this week’s show. Thank you all so much for joining us. If you would like to support us in our, in our endeavors here, please feel free to go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma to become a patron of the show. I do recommend that you do it through the internet rather than through the app. Do not sign up through the app. Apple takes a big chunk of it so just sign up through the web page on Patreon. You, you can get, you can gain access to early and ad-free versions of every show as well as the afterparty where Dan and I give you extra added bonus content every week. And, and also we just really appreciate it and it’s what makes the show go, so we appreciate it. So thanks to all of our patrons. If you’d like to reach out to us you can do so.

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Bye everybody.