Welcome back to Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with my guest, we were...
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Well, you tell us where we were,
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we've gone up
hill and down dale,
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but from the point of view
of the early Christian church,
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and, of course,
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how religious liberty
and the individual relates
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to some of those developments.
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Well, showing how
we go from Christianity
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trying to be ignored,
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so that they can
have their freedom...
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Yeah, I love that point.
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To Christianity
trying to cooperate
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and be a part of the
system in the public sphere
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to where by the time you get
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to Justinian's Christian Empire,
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Rome has become Christianity.
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Christianity has become Rome.
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And, of course,
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Christianity
changed more than Rome did.
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And so you end up with a state
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that is claiming
universal authority
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based on God's will,
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and then enforceable
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because it was
based on God's will.
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And religious freedom
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was not part of that economy.
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And, you know, we
had a little discussion
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about empires and, of course,
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the United
States has been called
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a modern empire.
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But in what regard do you
think that it radically differs
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from Christianity
under the Roman Empire,
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which merged
into one and the same?
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Well, ironically,
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the United States
develops as a nation first.
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And the envelopment of
being a Christian nation
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is actually an undercurrent
and throughout time,
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but it's always an undercurrent.
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The big thing is freedom.
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And so freedom
and religious freedom
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go hand in hand.
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So America, United States,
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is intending to
provide religious freedom
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over and against that
which was not religious freedom
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in the European nations.
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And so it has a
complete different history.
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Christianity was not developed
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in order to
create religious freedom,
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Christianity was not created,
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not developed as a
nation, it became an empire.
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But that's not
what it started as
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nor what it required.
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I thought long and hard
why has the American experience
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been so different
from the old world?
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Because religion
played a huge role
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in the different
settlements in this government.
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And I don't know
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that there's any
definitive answer.
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I think one key thing that is...
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I've just not
read about it much.
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But the Church of England,
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which was the
established Church of England,
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and was strong in
the United States,
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of course, backed the crown
in the War of Independence.
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And, so America began its
national life as a republic
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with the most important church
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discredited and seen
as the ultimate other.
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And even to this day,
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it's why it's
called the Episcopal Church
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in the other states.
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It doesn't sort
of fly very well,
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Anglican or Church of England.
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And so the back was broken,
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you know,
established not so much.
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Well, it was an established
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but a
politically powerful church.
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And what was left
was a patchwork quilt.
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And when I look at the
American history that way,
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it seems to me it's had
in very small microcosm,
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all of the
problems of the old world
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but so balkanized
on such a smaller level
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that it really didn't
affect the whole the same way.
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And the nation
develops as disparate groups
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trying to hold on to
the things they shared.
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And that's a very big difference
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between that and Christianity.
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Well, the infusion of the
whole enlightenment concept
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of Maryland Independence,
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and we're
autonomous beings and so on.
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It's a horrible admission
to make as a Christian,
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but I think,
given that Christianity
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with the Roman Empire
devolved to such a level,
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we needed this infusion
of secular self determination
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to sort of break the spell,
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even though
godless self determination
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is what Satan was
pushing in the garden.
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Yes, but in some ways,
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a true view of Christian freedom
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is actually reflected
in that humanistic feeling.
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Oh, yeah, it
almost inadvertently.
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You're right,
nature and nature is God.
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Right.
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So you end up with
the religious dynamic,
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even though there
are some of them trying
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to completely get rid
of that religious dynamic.
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Well, even as you say that,
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I'm thinking about Lord
Byron and his Manfred poem,
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he says in Rome,
you know, he did not...
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He looked in the ruins
and all the rest, he says,
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and until the whole
thing became religion.
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So secularism
almost taken to the limit
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becomes a religion.
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I don't really buy into the idea
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that is often said that
that secularism in the US
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should be managed and
recognized as a religion.
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I don't think
that's quite right,
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it makes no claims that way,
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even if people behave
toward a secular agenda
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like a religious person.
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But why is it
treated that way here?
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Because it's viewed as a tribe,
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and tribes have
religious autonomy.
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Yeah.
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And they're protecting
their religious views,
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and even those
that are anti-religious,
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that is viewed
by the larger group
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as a religious viewpoint...
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Yeah, well, in that regard, yes.
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Because of tribalism.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So, you know, again,
this is a moveable feast,
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and it's
interesting to discuss in the US
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how old these ancient influences
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came together
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and yet to really truly
enable religious liberty
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at the best times.
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But as always an
aspirational view
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that wasn't
shared in previous ages.
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And I can't remember Rome
ever did some good things,
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but it never made
these grand statements of
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all men are free
and all of these,
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quite the contrary.
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As the new world was settled in,
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the pope
determined at one point,
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they're not even human beings.
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So the US,
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I think, has fulfilled a
wonderfully enabling role
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of holding up a great ideal,
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not always living up
to it, but it's an ideal
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that facilitated
religious freedom
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and civil
liberties in a way that
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that the old states
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and the older religious entities
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haven't been able...
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Weren't able to do.
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So why is it collapsing in now?
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That's the question.
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Viewers...
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No, no, we need to discuss that.
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It is collapsing in, right.
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It is collapsing in, and
the attitude of people is
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we need freedom
for me, not for you.
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It's tribalism
again asserting itself,
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so the very thing that's causing
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the great
religions of the world,
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Hinduism is now turning
to having a Hindu state.
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Many of the
Islamic nations are saying
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now we are going
to be Islamic nations
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and have Islamic
law in our nations.
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And there's this great pole
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within the few Christian nations
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that are still
Christian enough to have mostly
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church going
Christians in them to say,
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"We must become
a Christian state."
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Is that a loss
or is that a gain?
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Well,
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you know, we can
analyze this at great length.
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What I think is going on.
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Ironically, in this
age of communications,
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there's less personal knowledge
of the different faiths
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that people are subscribed to.
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So they're not
informed about their own faith.
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And their
reaction that you described
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is because they perceive
a threat to their identity.
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This is the great
thing about globalism,
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is threatening to most groups.
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They feel that
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they'll be sort of bled
away into a larger hole,
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and they don't want that.
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So you have a threat and then
an ignorance about who you are,
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and it gets toxic
very quickly I think.
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But what is in...
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I feel the Bible says,
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"My people perish
for lack of knowledge."
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Lack of knowledge is a
pretty dangerous situation
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to be in.
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Yeah, especially
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if you're holding
on to your identity
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even though you don't
actually believe it anymore.
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And, you know,
two examples you gave,
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the Hindu nationalists,
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they feel threatened
with some justification.
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There's a large
Muslim minority in India,
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and they're on the
border of a radical state
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that's never
gotten over partition.
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And here are two nuclear states.
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I believe before...
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Very likely
before the end of time,
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they'll have a
shot at each other.
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Three times in my
lifetime they've gone to war.
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And then you start Islam.
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The Islamic
world is under threat
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or at least in the Middle East.
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I mean, it's an
open fact that the US
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some policy planners
beyond given administration,
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they have an agenda
to remake the map there,
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you know, it's
basically this Sykes-Picot air
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all over again.
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I'm referring to the British
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and the French foreign ministers
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who divvied up the Middle East.
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There is an inclination
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sharpened by
declining resources,
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oil in other parts
of the world to move in,
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and so Islam is
not totally wrong
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to think that in
a political sense,
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at least their home
base is under threat.
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And religious groups
that are not self assured
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about what they
believe in who they are,
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then come under some threat,
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not good.
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And Christianity
is not immune to this.
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No, and in the
context of tribalism,
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the idea that we
are right because we are
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as opposed to
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there's rational
reasons or spiritual reasons
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or it's God ordained reasons,
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not thoughtfully thought
out reasons or chosen reasons.
00:10:07.97\00:10:12.11
So you end up
with we are who we are,
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and we should be
allowed to remain who we are
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even if it means
00:10:18.88\00:10:20.22
we have to dominate
everyone else to do that.
00:10:20.25\00:10:22.28
Yeah, but we do
have to pray, and hope,
00:10:22.32\00:10:26.02
and work towards
increasing the knowledge
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and an understanding
of the rights of others
00:10:28.16\00:10:30.63
that can sort of defuse this
protective antagonistic element
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in the world
today, don't you think?
00:10:34.70\00:10:36.26
The reality is
00:10:36.30\00:10:37.63
that if I'm not willing to
give freedom to somebody else,
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religious
freedom to somebody else,
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I don't end up
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with any
religious freedom myself.
00:10:44.47\00:10:48.21
In one of his lectures,
00:10:48.24\00:10:49.58
CS Lewis
commented on a revolutionary
00:10:49.61\00:10:53.85
that he could imagine
who had murdered people,
00:10:53.88\00:10:58.05
overturned society,
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done all sorts
of murder and mayhem
00:10:59.45\00:11:01.09
all in the goal of
establishing his idea
00:11:01.12\00:11:05.89
of a perfect society.
00:11:05.93\00:11:08.00
But in the face
of God's judgment,
00:11:08.03\00:11:09.73
we recognize that it was futile.
00:11:09.76\00:11:11.93
In our day, I'm sure,
00:11:11.97\00:11:14.40
similarly, that
the group like ISIS,
00:11:14.44\00:11:16.30
murderous and
destructive to the limit,
00:11:16.34\00:11:20.01
if they could see as they will,
00:11:20.04\00:11:21.44
one day have as
futile and murderous
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that really was would be
surely very disappointed.
00:11:24.65\00:11:28.68
But we need to recognize that
many efforts have come and gone
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to establish the
kingdom of God on earth,
00:11:31.39\00:11:33.62
an ideal kingdom
00:11:33.66\00:11:35.62
that all of them
are destined for failure
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without recognizing
00:11:37.76\00:11:39.56
that it's in the
heart of free will
00:11:39.59\00:11:42.43
the truth is
established not by force,
00:11:42.46\00:11:45.03
and the God's kingdom
is a spiritual reality now.
00:11:45.07\00:11:49.50
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:49.54\00:11:52.51