This week on Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, join Dr. Gregory Seltz and his special guest, Dr. Robert Benne, author of such books as “Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-First Century, 1995; Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics, 2010, talking 2KG citizenship, voting and biblical principles that guide our public engagement. For Christians, the key is voting for the government to do what it is supposed to do (and make sure they don’t do what they are not supposed to do) and for citizens to do what they are supposed to do. There are fundamental truths that undergird “good” government and help prevent “bad” government.
Listen in for the legal, cultural, and faith perspective on these vital issues….as we continue to grow in the wisdom needed to be 2 Kingdom citizens for the country we love.
Transcript
Welcome to Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, sponsored by our friends at the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty here in Washington, DC a program that cuts through the chaos and confusion in the culture today by talking to Kingdom citizenship, bold, biblical principles for a robust public Christian life. And now your host, Dr. Greg Sells.
Good day, Good day, Washington, DC and friends of the program all around the country. I'm Greg Sells. Welcome to Liberty Action Alert. For every week we try to cut through the noise and take on the issues, especially the public issues that matter to you. People of faith. Today in our program, we welcome back a tremendous contributor to our work. I gotta say, first of all, Robert Benny, Professor Benny. His, his works paradoxical vision, uh, was foundational to my, in missional engagement in the city. Uh, whenever I was working, I was trying to keep politics in its proper place, uh, so I could actually do the work that I was supposed to do. And, and I had to deal with it cuz it was New York. I had to deal with it cuz it was LA Politics was just part of the water I was swimming in and paradoxical vision, how to depoliticize a lot of issues so I could actually engage the community.
His, his resources were great. There's another book out. Uh, it's been out for a while. Good and bad. Uh, ways to think about religion and politics. These are great resources folks for you to use. Cuz today we're talking about, you know, voting and we're gonna talk about this. And, and the title of the message is, is, uh, Vote Platforms then People, I used to say platforms, not people, but I guess you do have to take into account, uh, but put him in that proper order and let some of these resources be a help to you. He's been a professor, an author, a commentator on these things for a long time. He brings a lot of wisdom to the topic. Welcome Professor Benny. Always good to talk with you. Yeah. And, and likewise. And so, okay. You know, you heard my title of the message, Uh, go with that.
Is that a good, do you think that sends the right message for those who are getting ready to vote? They're taking their franchise, by the way, and one of the reasons why this is so important people is the Bible. Jesus is the one who differentiates, you know, give to Caesar what a Caesars give to God. What is God's? Cuz God is at work through Caesar, just not to save. Okay. That's why politics will not save you. Good politics won't save you. Bad politics though, can destroy. So, you know, in the Caesar church state and all that kind of stuff, Jesus differentiates and shows, you know, their relative importance. But America took that whole Caesar concept and gave it to the citizen. So when you exercise your vote, you're actually exercising the role of Caesar, if you will, in representative government in a way that no other culture has ever given its citizens, uh, that authority. So when I say vote platforms, then people, what Bob, take off on that. Do you think that's a good general advice? Or would you, you add to it or subtract from it?
Well, I take it you're saying that, uh, platform's more important than the people who actually represent it?
Well, I guess, you know, I, I want to be fair here and say, look, if, if I vote for guy and he says I'm not gonna do the platform, you know,
And I go, That guy's a really good guy. Well, why is he being talked like this in the national? Because the people who control the levers of PR have decided he's, he's a bad dude. So again, I just go, Well, okay, but what was he espousing? So I, I start with the platform. What are you telling me you're gonna do? And is that what I want government to do not to do? Is that maintaining a proper healthy understanding of church and state for the sake of the church and its mission, Those kind of things. Sanctity of life, those kind of things. So I'm looking for those things in their, in their platform first. And I'm assuming they're gonna carry out their platform either side.
. And it appeared again in:Right. I agree with that. And, you know, but see the thing that, but I get hit by the other side who says, How could you have voted for that? Because he's such a mean guy. And I say, I finally said, Do you even know who Joe Biden is as a real person? I mean, do you know who Hillary Clinton is? Do you know who these people are? Of course you don't. And I, there's stuff I've seen about, you know, what happens here on the hill? I'm like, man, they're not what they say they are and blah, blah blah, but you never hear that. And so this whole notion of, well, I voted for him cuz he was a nice guy and he cared about me. I said, That's not the right way to vote for a politician. Cause that's,
A lot of people do that. Of
Course. Well, I think that's dangerous.
Well know politics, they don't the principles, so they just make an assessment of the person. And as you say, that's very malleable given the the public relations industry we have. But I want getting back to the point, it seems to me that, uh, I mean, I will admit I've voted for Trump and I've disconnected from several friendships. Yeah. Because I admitted that. Yeah. But I didn't vote for Trump because of the person. Right. For a couple of things. One was the promise that there were gonna be openings at the Supreme Court. I thought that was the most important thing going in that election, Right. Is whether, uh, those vacancies would be filled with people who believed in the Supreme Court as a referee, not as, uh, a legislator, but particularly that they would be willing to, uh, uh, be in favor of the exercise of religious freedom. That was so crucial to me. So, uh, that was, I voted for him
Purely for that.
Hell by knows a little bit, but, uh, and he followed through. The other thing is, is no other president actually came to the pro-life, uh, uh, meeting in March, like Trump did.
Oh, he was, yeah. Unbelievably on the, I
Don't know that I believe that he was each actually pro-life. I wouldn't, there was a lot of abortion in his history. Right. And I wouldn't doubt that at all. But he came and he, it was because of him. It seems to me that the Roe v Wade thing was struck down, not so much on religious grounds perhaps, but on constitutional grounds
And, and on on, you know, folks, when we, and we can talk about pro-life, uh, issues and I'd love to come back and talk about that, but it's the sanctity of life. I was at one of the rallies after, you know, Dobbs was overturned and I was talking to some, you know, pro-abortion activists and I said, you know why we're here, We're here for you. And they're like, What do you mean for you? You're here to just rub our noses in? I said, No, we're not. I said, We're here because the art, what you're hearing these people say is that there's human life. That if we can actually say it's not worth living, we can dispose of it with state power. And you know, folks, eventually they might look at you the same way they look at the, the child in the womb or the older person when they are not useful to society. And we're saying, No, you're human. There's a, there's an inherent dignity to that and we are fighting for that, even for you. And they said, Oh, we never thought about it that way. And so, again, I think, like you said, it, this was a we just wanna be human, we want be civil, we wanna be humanity, not something less than humanity. And I think Trump may have come at it that way. You're, you're probably right.
Well, and I, I think after the fall of Roe v Wade, it's a little bit disturbing and fat frightful how much anger it was from a large part of our population that there was any restraints at all on abortion
Period. Yeah. Up to, up to and after birth. Yeah. Well, okay, so I think you're, I think you're kind of jiving with me. I i, we, we can talk about these principles. Well, let's get to some of those principles. And the first one, I, I wrote an article, it's called a mom and pop paper. Cuz we try to keep things simple here so that people can really understand. And it, the title was, It's wrong when the referees Play the Game. And I think the first question, and I think a lot of people are being seduced today, they think government can take care of everything. It cannot. And not only it, it can't, it it won't, You know, even if it pledges to do a, there's certain things it's not designed to do. And when Jesus differentiates, you know, give the Caesar what a Caesars give to God.
What is god's, What I think America did in a, in a very wise way, is they elevated, well they actually demoted the state to a lower position and elevated the church as legitimate authorities in our lives. And they said, if those two authorities exist in your life, then individual freedom can literally be protected and honored. Well, when the referees decide to start playing the game
And, uh, of course one of the great, uh, gifts of America is that we had a limited state at the very beginning. Right. And everybody was conscious at that point, the founders, that you had to have a virtuous citizenry. Right. In order to have a limited government than what's happened, it seems to me is there's been more, uh, retro regression in family life, for example. Right. And the role of the religion in American life and the kind of dissolution of what, uh, Ross do called, uh, uh, the gentle Protestant hegemony Right. Build up through the centuries, which was the guidance system for American life. And now that's being squandered. Churches are being weakened and, uh, the, the, the agencies that actually implant character in people that enable them to be self-governing them to be the players.
Right. Well, and
Waiting. And so what the Greek danger is the government takes over those functions because citizens don't do it themselves. And sometimes that because a, a real needful intervention, but many times it's, uh, the expansion of government because once government begins expanding, it likes to expand
I argue with you a little bit on the, um, government side that is quite a few statesmen, quite a few government people, uh, elected people who are aware quite of exactly what we've been talking about. For example, Ben SaaS, you know, who's Yeah. Nebraska Senator. He, he quite aware that, that the country is dependent upon a flourishing voluntary sector.
I agree with that. But see, the thing for me is then why, see, well, I go back to what, when we started to see the dissolution of family in the urban areas, we started to see that already in the late sixties and the government. And, and now it's so ridiculously outta whack, but it was all by public policy. And there's a, there's a nefarious aspect of government. If we can create enough chaos, they they're gonna have to turn to us. And, and so I guess I'm struggling with, okay, well, but the reality is I love what Ben Sass is. I've read his books too. It's great stuff. But you as a government, you, you guys, you guys never attacked the fact that you were part of the problem. I mean, the policies were part of the problem. And we haven't ren renewed on any of those policies. We just keep throwing it at it. And it just keeps dissolving the family, displacing the church and creating this notion, the government's gonna fix it anyway when the government's creating the problem. So I, I guess I go right back to, let's ask the first question. What is the main role of government? And have we, have we asked too much of it?
Well, I agree with you in your, uh, sharp critique of the government's taking up these roles, not only of the referee, but the player and I would face it more to the administrative state. That is where you build up a huge bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is not gonna shrink, it's gonna find, which then intervenes more and more with regulations and it intervenes more and more into the public sector, private sector where the formation of virtue takes place. And I must say it's, it's really a scary pro, uh, prospect. What is, what is gonna rebuild the family, particularly among poor whites and especially among poor white blacks with mother dominated fa uh, families. And what, what is some huge percentage of young black men in prison are from fatherless homes. Right. How's the government gonna help with that?
Well, I think, yeah, and the question is, did the government help create that? Absolutely. And I think that's a big issue and no one's talking about it, but it's the number one issue in the city. And uh, black conservatives, Hispanic conservatives will tell you that face to face. I would say again, any, any legislation that incentivizes families to stay together, any legislation that gives intact families the ability to send their kids to educational facilities that build the virtue in them that they wish, which is called parental choice folks, It, it, it, black families, Hispanic families, and white poor families, they all want it. And yet there's one side that won't let it happen. And there's another side that can't seem to get it done. But my point is, is that those are, again, you start with honor your father and your mother. That's the principle and legislation that goes against that is bad legislation, legislation that incentivizes it but can't, you know, but still demands that they do it. That's probably better legislation and don't look for legislation to solve all these problems. Would that be a fair way to think about some of that?
Well, it sure is. And your, your articulation of how, um, uh, the government takes the role of parents is really a, a hot point now with gender ideology.
Right. Schools
That's a lot higher than the poverty question right now because it's taking so much of the role of parents away from them on this crucial issue of a kind of a solid identity, which I mean, in my growing up, he was, no one worried about that. Everybody had a clear, I just went, signed up for a vaccination at CVS that asked me what was my birth assigned at birth, What was, what is my gender identity assigned at birth? And I'm gonna give this the, the the medical person that's gonna do the vaccine. I'm gonna give 'em a bad time about that. Yeah. I mean this is, this is ridiculous. So I, I agree that, uh, that incursion of the government, public education is most visible there, but it's visible in other places too. Poverty being one, but that we're not very conscious of that right now, how government has made fam people dependent create a dependency among poor blacks and poor whites.
Well, I would even go, like I said to defund the police, um, movement. I always said, Oh, oh, absolutely. Look, here's our Lutheran argument on the two kingdom argument. I said, Yeah, we don't want limited government. I don't want police in every corner. I mean, if you've ever been in a neighborhood that's that's got a policeman on every corner, you can't, you know, or if you drive over the speed limit, a little flashing sign sends you a ticket or something, that'd be a terrible place to live. But if you have a, a weaker or a limited police force, you need strong families. They're an inverted relationship to each other. Well, when you have policies that destroy the family, policies that destroy the police, then all you got left is the power of government. And, and, and if we keep a healthy police, we don't ask the police to be moms and dads. They're the the last line of defense against really bad people. That's all we want the police to do. And they, they're supposed to honor the badge, uh, that we create the laws of that badge. Um, that's a civil society saying we, we can handle most of these things ourselves. And so again, like you said, our way of engaging these things is to actually put things in their proper place. Start with the principles first.
Right. And one of the things, uh, we didn't mention that's crucial is, uh, once people are arrested, really violent criminals arrested, they have to be kept in prison. They can't be right out on the street again. And this, I think these are one of the key issues in the coming election, right? Safety, right. Uh, financial things like, uh, uh, inflation, Those seem to be the two top ones. And when I tried to, uh, articulate my book, uh, Ordinary Saints, the Functions of government, Purposes of government, first one is domestic security in order,
Right? Romans 13.
And, uh, safety is a big problem, uh, having to do with the police and other things. And yet second thing is economic health and vitality.
Or, and, and I guess like I said, even there I would argue that, uh, the government really, you know, in a free market, we again dictate a lot of that stuff. I I always use the example of socialism as the government tries to dictate whatever thing's supposed to cost, how we produce it and we wind up having less of it and we wind up having higher prices. But look at Southwest as a, as a free organization. They let all of their workers have a stake in the company. They give stock in the company to all their workers. So whenever someone's serving you on the plane or flying it or managing the company, everybody wins when the company does well. And I'm saying United and American could sure learn a few things
Right?
But the last thing you want is the federal government telling Southwest what to, what to charge their people, et cetera,
Cetera. You want the ingenuity and creativity and right ence of, uh, producing of the free market economy. But what the point is, is that, and right it's happening now in this election, is that the government gets blamed for bad
Has
Couple trillion in and then costs then creates a enormous increase in the price of energy. So you get those two things going and you've got inflation. So they're, they have to be responsible for that in that sense. And a lot of that would be pulling back regulations, right? And not putting so much money into the economy, not, not printing money.
Right. Well, you know, first of all, again, I love your books. Help me depoliticize a lot of these issues. So we could even have a spirited discussion about economics and maybe we disagree on that and we could still go to the altar of the Lord together. Absolutely. Uh, I love your, I call it the Benny grid of engagement. There's a couple of things that you've gotta say of thus say it the Lord from the church to the government. Cuz the, the only power that's able to keep the government in its place is the moral, um, you know, the moral and virtue of its of the citizenry and the church. And right now folks, uh, like, like Dr. Benny's talking about the church is being weakened. Some of it because we are not doing our job and others because of, uh, the plan. But again, I love that paradoxical vision helped me depoliticize so many issues so that I could actually do the evangelism work.
Um, and so how about this, you know, the principles we're talking about religious liberty. Cause I can defend that for all people. Absolutely. Um, sanctity of life, cuz what's the point of doing any of this stuff if we can say some lives aren't worth living and I mean innocent life not, you know, if, if someone defies sanctity of life kills somebody, that's a whole different discussion cuz they violated that. The third one is we talk about marriage as an institution, but we actually argue that it's a religious liberty issue for us. If the government won't keep its, you know, pause out of the male female relationship, they should get out of the whole marriage business and let us defend marriage and, and grow marriage as a blessing that it is. And the last one's educational freedom that we should be able to educate our children in the virtuous educational process that we wish. Those are the four things I look for when I vote. I'm looking for the candidate. What does he say about that? What's the platform? Is he gonna execute that platform or is he actually arguing against that platform? And then I'm gonna actually oppose that. And so do you want to add anything to that or do you think that's a fair way to start?
Well, I think we, yeah, I agree with those. Uh, certainly, uh, the, the educational freedom, uh, seemed could be subsumed under religious freedom,
But not, Yeah, I think that's another religious liberty issue for us. You're exactly right.
But I guess I would add a social minimum that, and in, in the sense that the most vulnerable and unable to contribute on a society need to be supported, uh, in a very wholesome manner. And you could start with easy cases like people who have been wounded terribly in Afghanistan. The government should be responsible for really great care for them. But what, where it really gets tricky is where you get able bodied people who can work and you have to set up the incentives and the disincentives in such a way that you push them into
Work. Well folks, in closing, we've got a Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty guidelines for your vote vote principles, platforms, then people, And there's one paragraph I'll just close today's session. Here's, here's a paragraph from that, politicians and policies that properly differentiate the role of state and church in our lives that would favor limiting government coercive involvement in our lives to a healthy minimum, favoring and promoting the sanctity of life, the fundamental authority of parents with their children, especially with regards to education. Uh, defending the institutional nature of marriage between one man and one, one woman for life. And it's necessary blessing for culture. If they won't do that, at least allow us to teach it, promote law and order with all equal justice under the law for communities. The bad guys should be afraid of the law. The good guys and people who live relatively civil life shouldn't promote property rights, self defense for people wish to create the homes of safety, peace, and prosperity for their ones they love, especially their children. And vote principles, Christians that honor the commands of the scripture and the scripture's delineation and limitation of the role of government in our lives. To that end, God bless you and go and vote. Thank you Dr. Benny for being with us today. You're welcome. Good to be here. Thanks for tuning in today. To get to know our L c LDC work better, check out our website@lclfreedom.org. Till next time, God bless you always. I'm Greg Seltz. Have a great week.
You've been listening to Liberty Action Alert with Greg Seltz, executive director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty in Washington dc. This program has been brought to you by the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty.