Are You A Christian Nazi?

AI Generated Transcript (I only fixed the mis-spelling of my name and added ONE paragraph break - I left the rest of the mess just the way AI delivered it haha):

Are you a Christian Nazi? Welcome to Jon's Voice Notes, where I, Jon Davis, ramble on about whatever it is I'm thinking about. Whatever I want to say today, I say it here. I am in my favorite little Jon's Voice Note cul-de-sac on yet another spectacularly beautiful

Green, light breeze, about 67 degrees out, spring day in northern Illinois. The birds are chirping. How refreshing is that? But let's get to it. So...

A while ago, like if you went to my podcast, which I haven't posted on for a while, called Gospel of Everything Podcast. That's at gospelofeverything.com slash podcast. I think my most recent episode, which was a while ago, was about Christian nationalism. So I might say some similar things to that, but I didn't go listen to it. I'm just going fresh, and I've had some time to think about it since then.

And things have changed a little. Different people have begun to occupy that phrase, Christian nationalism. It's getting defined. So it wasn't as defined back when I did that podcast episode. But just to, I don't know, maybe review a little, if I even remember exactly what it was about. Christian nationalism. Should Christians be Christian nationalists?

The word nationalist is often used in a negative way. And people associate it with like Hitler or who's the Italian dude that I can't remember his name right now from World War II, Mussolini. Or, you know, just anybody who's a dictator, but a patriotic dictator.

That's what it's associated with. But the word is actually even still used in more ways than that, which is why it's hard to actually answer the question, should you be a Christian nationalist? Because nationalist has multiple ways of being used. Some people use the word nationalist to mean basically like a fascist, like, you know, nation first, screw the rest of the world.

We're going to be on top. You know, tyranny. We want a hero to lead us. This kind of nationalism. You know, a patriotic fervor that's intense in, I don't know, maybe the wrong way. Whatever that is. Maybe that's a good talk sometime. What is patriotism?

But that's one way people use it. Another way it gets used... I'm going to tell you two other ways I've heard it used personally. I have heard it used to describe...

the Federalists during the early days of the United States. They were the ones that wanted to have a stronger, more centralized nation. They were Nationalists as opposed to Localists, or maybe not as opposed to, because they were probably more Localists than we are, but meaning they wanted to come together more strongly as a nation, with more centered in the nation itself. So Nationalists can mean

More national than local, whatever state you're in now. Another way I've heard it used, and this is the one I find probably the most interesting, is I've heard it used in contrast to an internationalist, like a globalist, who wants a centralized global type governance in different areas. Global governance.

government activism, you know, creating structures and systems and taxes and these kinds of things are on a global level. So sometimes someone may say they are a nationalist because they want to preserve local national sovereignty. So ironically, it's being used in almost the opposite way. It's more local. So when you say this person may say I'm a nationalist and they mean as opposed to a globalist.

I want all the nations to be able to govern themselves without being dominated or tyrannized. Is that a word? By a globalist system. So you got at least these three ways. It still has the same basic meaning. You know, someone who's into the nation. But there are very different ways of using it. So if you're going to be a Christian nationalist, you know, first you got to know what do you mean by nationalist? Right?

Do you mean as opposed to internationalist? Well, I guess there's kind of a fourth way, and this is the way I would mostly see it, but I'm still uncomfortable with that phrase, not because of its inherent meaning, the phrase Christian nationalism, but because of the way it is getting used, because of the ideas that are occupying that space in the common mind. But I see a Christian nationalist simply as someone who wishes to Christianize

Which, if I remember, we'll talk about what that exactly means in a little bit, because that scares some people. They think that means the Christian Nazis or the Christian Taliban are going to, you know, come along and make everyone wear certain clothes and go to church. And, you know, that's what they think it means.

Maybe someone means that when they say it? Possibly? I wouldn't mean that. That's not what I want. But the Christian aspect changes things a little bit because what would it mean to have a Christian nation? Can you have a Christian nation? I've heard some say that people can be Christians, but a nation can't be Christian. How does a nation get born again and become a Christian?

Well, there are several ways to define a Christian nation. One way is you could just simply mean most of the people there are Christian. Oh yeah, that's a Christian nation. Most of the people there are Christians. You could mean something like their structure, their actual philosophy of government, their way of doing things is very Christian, is rooted in Christianity. You could mean there's a historical heritage of Christianity.

You could mean the laws are just and right and based on Christian principles. All of these are things you could mean by a Christian nation. And I would say that based on any of those, you could have a Christian nation. It's possible. In fact, I would submit to you, there's going to be a day, probably not in our lifetime, where all nations will be Christian nations.

That will be all there is left, our Christian nations. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. This is where it's going. So whether or not the current entities that we call nations will still be present then in their current form in any way, who knows? That's an unknown amount of time away.

But eventually the world will be full of Christian nations. So if I were to say I want to Christianize America. I'm from the U.S. and I'm American. I want to Christianize America. Totally. Without hesitation. Yes. Absolutely. Sometimes people get uncomfortable with that. Because the only way they can understand the phrase is coercion. We're going to coerce people into Christianity.

Now, there are parts of Christianity that you can coerce someone into, and there's parts that you cannot. What? What? Are you shocked to hear that? Well, here's an example of something that you cannot coerce. Faith. You cannot coerce someone into believing something. You can coerce someone into external behavior. Now, I would say that if you read the Bible, and then do the hard work of trying to apply it to our day and our time...

You're going to find that there are some principles there that are uncoercable, and they either can't be coerced or they should not be. And I don't think I have time in this particular episode to go into how do you determine that, but there's things that cannot be or should not be.

Coerced. Faith would be one. I don't think I would allow coercion of church attendance or wearing certain clothes or whatever. There's certain things that can't be coerced. Another conversation as to what they are. But let me give you some examples of things that can be coerced, that force can be applied. And these are elements of Christianity. You just probably have, maybe you don't notice them or recognize them as elements of Christianity.

How about this? Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lie. Specifically, it says bear false witness against your neighbor, which I think is talking about like justice, you know, like lying in court to get your neighbor punished. And probably a general form of the kinds of lying that harm someone as opposed to, you know, like libel or...

We have laws based on these ideas today. There are things you can't say. You cannot lie about someone to harm them knowingly. And then there's a fine line sometimes between this is my genuine opinion and I don't think it's a lie, but they think it's a lie and you dispute it in court or whatever. But thou shalt not lie. There's one. I always thought in the past that thou shalt not commit adultery. How do you fit that in?

How do you, you know, is that something the government should be involved with? I am leaning more and more towards absolutely adultery should be a crime. There you go. Call me out. Call me and argue with me. But most people are going to agree with a thou shalt not murder and a thou shalt not steal. And the side issues of like don't assault people, don't rape people, you know. These are things that we generally agree on.

We shelt not to do them, and we're willing to use the force of government to stop it. If I see someone being in the process of being raped, you know what? And I have a bat. I'm going to use that bat with Christian love on the head of the person who's doing the crime. Or if the police are arresting that person and dragging them off to court to have a fair trial and hopefully be found guilty for what they did and punished...

Yes, this is a right time to use coercion. So every time we sentence a murderer to death or to prison, we are coercing Christianity. You know, what? I thought these things were common to man. Well, sometimes, but you know, study societies throughout history. It's not always common.

There have been societies that allow murder in certain cases other than self-defense or the ways the Bible would allow it. The way we see murder is a Christian idea, and it's being enforced. We are enforcing our religion on everybody. Thou shalt not murder. So those are just a couple examples. Now you get into idolatry. What about public idolatry?

I don't know. I mean, like, I've always thought, like, for example, pornography. Free speech, right? I'm not going to look. I'm going to keep it away from my kids. But I have seen the devastation pornography is bringing into our society. It is massive. If you're listening to this, you might be nodding your head looking at your own life. You might be looking in the mirror and nodding your head going, yeah, he's right. The consequences of this are massive.

It's adultery. It's a form of, I mean, pornea is literally related to the word fornication. You're watching it. You're watching sin and celebrating it. I think, I suspect that ultimately, and ultimately, I don't know, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, I don't know. It's going to have to be outlawed and there's going to have to be coercion used to stop it.

But the main, even with murder, stealing, pornography, adultery, idolatry, even if those things are in the realm of, I say civil government, when coercion is allowed, it's either self-defense or civil government, the state.

Those things, if there's coercion involved, I call that civil government. But I think the day is going to come when porn is going to have to be outlawed. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to pull it off without causing other problems of free speech issues.

But the stuff that everyone knows is porn. We might argue and say, no, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. There's stuff that we all know. Everybody knows. Yeah, that's the purpose of that is nudity and sexual activity for the purpose of perversion and getting people to celebrate it in their own minds and hopefully pay for it, right? I think eventually it's going to have to be outlawed. So all of this...

Figuring these things out and applying them correctly is part of what I mean by Christianizing a nation. But there's something that comes before that that is more important, and that it will be impossible to truly Christianize a nation or call it Christian without it. And that's conversion. That's mass conversion, repentance, revival, people turning their lives over to Christ.

regeneration, people born again and they're changed inside and they want to be different. They want to live different. This is the foundation. If you do not have that, well, one, in a democracy, you're not going to be able to implement any sort of Christian nationalism. But two, without that, it's going to be just a surface thing. And it's probably going to require some unpleasant tyranny type activities.

Read the history of ancient Israel. They had both. They had mass revivals and they had times where the kings and the judges used coercion. So I kind of did it in reverse here because it's the priority. Christianizing a nation primarily means inviting the people to be Christian. Now I'd like you to notice something about this. We have no ability to control that.

People can reject God. We can preach the gospel until we're blue in the face. We need to apply Christian principles to our nation until we're blue in the face. But if people don't want to convert, they won't. You can't really coerce someone into a genuine conversion.

I heard a very interesting discussion about apparently King Alfred used to offer to spare the lives of the kings he defeated in England, or in whatever they called it back then. You know, he would offer them a chance to spare their life if they would be baptized as a Christian. And these guys were having a great discussion. I think it was the Cross-Politic podcast. They were having a great discussion about can...

that be a genuine conversion? And I'm going to say that's not the general way conversion works. Conversion is a heart change when God gives you faith and you're born again. I'm kind of a believer of first you're born again, then you know you have faith, but it gives all the credit to God. But here's the thing. One of the things they talked about was this defeated king. They probably saw it as their God was defeated by the God of the ones that defeated them.

So they were actually open. So I think it's possible, not guaranteed, but it's possible that a defeated king in those days, knowing he's about to be executed and being offered a chance for life, if he will repent and be baptized and be a Christian, I think it's possible you could have a true conversion. But I don't know. God is the judge. But we all know that's not the general way it works. The general way it works is...

How will they know unless someone is sent? Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God. So we go, we Christians go, and we tell. We tell people with our words and with our lives, and they say, I want that. And God stirs them up, and they're born again, and they have faith. This is where the core of any sort of Christian nationalism that's going to have any success will be rooted. This is where it's going to come from, from conversions.

But in the meantime, there are some things, like when we're, I know sometimes people will say, how can you be against, how can you be for making abortion illegal? You can't force your religion on other people. Well, first of all, if you murder your unborn baby, you have forced your religion on that unborn baby.

To the extent of murdering them. So somebody's going to have religion forced on them. All law is based on beliefs, moral beliefs. That's where they come from. They come from some sort of moral beliefs. Moral beliefs come from religion or some sort of equivalent of religion.

Maybe they don't believe in God or whatever, but they have some sort of spiritual, whatever you call it, beliefs from which they're deriving their morals. Maybe they don't know where their morals come from, but they ultimately come from religion. So every time we enforce a law, we're enforcing religion. We all know, based on history, intuition, and we actually come from a Christian background, even if you're not a Christian, that there are some things that can't be coerced and aren't designed by God to be coerced.

So we separate those things out, right? But this is actually supposed to be a talk on Christian nationalism. And I'm kind of getting into the philosophy of government, civil government here. But it's related because people, if you say, I'm a Christian nationalist, sometimes people hear you're a Christian Nazi. That's what they think you're saying. I don't think that's the best definition of the phrase. But I've heard some things from some people. They shall remain nameless at this point.

popular book writers, etc., that I'm like, holy moly, I can't believe you said that. And there is people calling themselves Christian nationalists who are, I think, going the wrong way. And they're, as far as I can tell, they are more loudly occupying the phrase. So I'm not very enthusiastic about the phrase, but the idea of Christianizing a nation, I am all for. The idea of defending national sovereignty against a globalist incursion

Or a foreign incursion. I totally agree there, too. And I want to pursue the Christianization of my nation through 99% voluntary conversions. Well, you know, sovereignty of God, is it voluntary? You know what I mean.

So there is a real sense in which I am a Christian nationalist. I'm into Christian nationalism, but I understand that phrase is about 80% chance of being misunderstood, and I do not identify or associate with anyone who...

believes in kind of a nationalist, socialist, Nazi, where the emphasis is on the coercion. I don't stand with someone where the emphasis is on the coercion. I understand some things involve coercion, but there's going to be no, what's that show, I've never watched it, Red, the color red's involved. Some supposedly perverted show, I can't believe, I don't remember what it's called, but it's where the

You know, women are a commodity because the ability to reproduce has been destroyed. The Handmaid, is it The Handmaid's Tale or The Handmaid's Tale? I've never seen it, but I understand that's what it's about.

I'm kind of laughing at those who are thinking our current president and our current populist movement is about that. It's not even close. Talk about being melodramatic and silly. So no, if that's Christian nationalism, no. Absolutely not. But if it just means we wish to...

have a nation, nothing wrong with having a nation, and we wish to defend from globalist or foreign incursions and defend our nationality, our nationhood, and we wish to pursue the Christianization of it through preaching the gospel and teaching God's standards, then yeah, let's do it. Does that make sense? So I feel like there's one more thing I wanted to say, but it's

Okay, I remember the one thing I want to say is even within the context of a nation, I would advocate for pushing as many things as possible to local governance.

In our country, in the way we're structured, that would be pushing it towards the states. But even the states should be pushing as much as possible towards the counties. The responsibilities and the benefits of being a part of the society as local as possible. The reason is because on a local level,

The government is in touch with the people more. The people are going to approach the government directly. So as much governance as possible done on a local level is a good thing. So in that sense, I would be less than a nationalist than others because I don't want the nation to control everything at all. I like local control. I want states' rights. I want the states to be able to pursue their convictions about the law.

And I want each state to be Christianized voluntarily through conversion and through learning about the principles of God in the same way. So it's interesting because I think about historically how some of the ways Europe became Christian, like if a king were to convert...

There's going to be an automatic effect on the laws and maybe lots of people, at least on the surface, converting. Maybe they'll really convert because they're following in their hearts the king, following to Jesus. But there's a way of society being changed through kings, right? We don't have a king. We don't want to have a king in the United States. So how would it change? I think in some ways it will be harder because we're not designed...

to do things from the top down. It takes forever. It's difficult. Look at Trump trying to do all these executive orders. We're not designed for that. We're designed, actually, to be governed locally, and then we have a national affiliation, which really is a nation, and there are some laws. It is way outgrown its intention. It's way bigger, way beyond, utterly beyond the original nation.

intent of that government. We don't want that nation to govern everything. Just provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, preserve freedom for our posterity. How about we do that? Most of what's being done is not related. And, you know, why are we meddling in other countries? I always tell people that our government does not exist.

for other countries. In a sense, America first, right? However, we as human beings do have an involvement with other countries as missionaries, Christian missionaries. So whenever the government, the United States and USA, we're going to go in and save the world. I'm like, you got it wrong. That's what the missionaries are for. That's me is what I'm for. We go and we teach and we preach mission.

And if the people convert to Jesus, they will begin to Christianize their own nation. They will do the nation building. It comes through the gospel. It comes through missions work. And the gospel of everything. The gospel that applies to all of life. Not just getting born again and not going to hell. Okay. So there you go. I'm definitely getting extra rambly and extra wandery today. I guess I think about these things a lot. But thank you for listening.

I'm glad you're here, all one of you, however many of you there are. Are there any? Send me a message, gospelofeverything.com slash contact, and tell me what you think. Maybe I'll even use whatever you say to address something on this audio blog. But thank you for listening. 

This is Jon Davis and Jon's Voice Notes signing off.