The Metastasizing Technocratic State: Governance, Technology, and the Disappearing Church

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. James Spencer

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 4/9/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand in the Gap today. My theme for today is this, the metastasizing technocratic state, governance, technology, and the disappearing church. My returning guest is Dr. James Spencer. He’s the president of the Useful to God ministry, as well as president of the D.L. Moody Center, and I’ll give those websites throughout the program that you can go to either one of them. But before we begin our discussion today of the metastasizing technocratic state, governance, technology, and the disappearing church, I must give a short introduction because this conversation today, this program will extend beyond today’s program. And the reason it will is because it had its genesis before today’s program. I’ll explain. Last week on this program, here, recurring guest constitutional attorney David New joined me for a consideration of our theme then entitled The Church and its role and limits in our constitutional system.

And that research that I did for that led me to present our current condition in America in a more comprehensive way. Today’s conversation will focus more, I would say, on the historical role of the church in relationship to civil government and how its relationship has evolved over 2000 years. This we know. When the church biblically proclaims the gospel and models the glorifying of God in all areas of life, the results are transformative. However, history also affirms that when the church and church leaders succumb to the desire for immediate gratification and a seat at the table of civil government, more than its unique biblical duty to preach the word, the church loses its distinct influence. One thing is certain from history, human government has always sought a partnering with the religious leaders of its time. One clear example is the Roman Catholic Church of its historical merger with civil power, which lasted until the early American founders, where they were motivated by a desire for individual worship and they fled such despotic and autocratic systems.

That shift in part birthed William Penn here in Pennsylvania where I’m sitting, his holy experiment in freedom and our nation’s strong desire for freedom of worship. Now, despite this history, civil leaders today, as they have always, they continue to seek religious alignment. Political leaders, I’m saying, have always sought to seek religious alignment to bring moral sanction to their political aims. It’s not new. This reality was recently highlighted by a shameful event at the White House. I commented on it earlier, but I’ll say it again. During an Easter celebration a week ago yesterday, focused on Jesus Christ there, you’ve heard about that. President Trump’s personal pastor, Paula Cain White, drew numerous comparisons between the president and our risen Savior. And by extending glory reserved for God alone to a human leader, she, by definition, committed blasphemy. And I called it that. And sadly, those present failed to raise any question then or later.

Now to me, this example reflects a recurring historical tragedy, a church in retreat. Instead of being the salt of the earth and speaking truth to power, many within the church succumbed to the temptation to trade access to earthly power more than Holy Spirit power. And the promise of government favor and protection more than independence of prophetic biblically forthtelling their duty and their God-given role as moral auditor. So motivated by these events, I’ve conducted extensive research into forms of governance, the role of the church, and the rising influence of technology on modern states. And we’ll build out more of these in later programs. But this includes analyzing the attitudes of various US presidents, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, to Joe Biden, to Donald Trump, and toward the Constitution and the governance issue. Now, viewed through the lens of scripture and a biblical worldview. The current situation, I think, becomes clear.

We are witnessing the rise of a metastasizing, I mean, coming into development technocratic state where what works is more important than what’s true. And efficiency and progress is more important than fearing God and submitting to moral law. Now, joining me again, as I said, to discuss this critical transition as Dr. James Spencer, president of the Useful to God Ministry. And with that, Dr. James Spencer, thanks for being back with me.

James Spencer:

Yeah, thanks. Pleasure to be here, Sam.

Sam Rohrer:

James, in my research, I’ve found that nearly every president promised some type of change and each of them established their own branding phrase. For example, George W. Bush had his compassionate conservatism. Barack Obama had his audacity of hope and change. Donald Trump came forth with his ultimate deal maker and MAGA presentation, Joe Biden had his restoration of the soul. Here’s my question. Why from your perspective do politician wannabes, they were all running for office when they came up with these phrases, but why do all of them include some type of approach to change? And why are people and citizens so hungry for political and policy change?

James Spencer:

Well, I think part of it is that the hunger for political change isn’t just some sort of branding slogan. People feel pain every day. There are real problems in need of solutions. And so politicians have picked up on this. They’ve picked up on the fact that people want to see things change. And so as human beings are oriented toward the future, wired to believe that the present arrangements are not the final word or even the best situation for them to be in as they’re feeling various forms of discomfort and suffering and difficulty buying things and prices going up, what have you. I think they gravitate towards someone who will stand up and say, “I understand the problem and I have the solution.” Now, those solutions are almost always too terribly simple, right? They are solutions that are offered that won’t actually solve the problem, but the reality is that I think there’s a hunger for change because people are really feeling the pinch of everyday life and they would like for their lives to be better in some way.

And so they look to politicians who have control over policy, who have control of their structure, who can distribute the wealth, the attacks, and all these different things. And they say, “Surely these people can make my lives better.” And I think that’s why those messages really do work.

Sam Rohrer:

And I can say from having run for office many, many times myself, being in about 20 years, I know this, that political campaigns and those who advise on them, tell them the more accurately you can identify what the people are hungry for and you come up with a way to meet that, the more successful and more likely you are and going to be elected. So a lot of it is a strategy developed by those who would like to be in office, and a lot of it can be determined by careful observation and survey work. So ladies and gentlemen, think about that because it is true and it’s one of those things that, well, it produces narratives, it produces campaigns, it’s what’s discussed in gatherings and print and all of that. So okay, we’ll leave it there. You get the idea. When we come back, we’re going to go further now into this and give a little bit of a reflection on the history of governance, systems of government, and primarily the role of the church.

What is the role of the church in civil society? Well, if you’re just joining us today, welcome aboard. Our theme today is a little different. Well, I wouldn’t say it’s different. It’s combining of a number of things we’ve talked much about today. And here it is. It’s the metastasizing technocratic state, governance, technology, and the disappearing church. And I’ll say that the program today will have a number of follow-up programs to it because there are a number of key elements within this today as my special guest and I, Dr. James Spencer, he’s the president of the Useful to God ministry, introduced him in the first segment. Here’s his website for that usefultogod.com, usefultogod.com. But as a part of that, and trying to examine what’s happening within, let’s just put it this way, America today, but it has application across the globe. Changes are occurring on all sides.

We talked a little bit about change, why that is. But looking today, specifically at the role of government and church, we’re going to talk about the role of the church now, and well only talk about things that are facilitating changes, and basically a church almost in retreat in America, and that’s technology and other things. We won’t be able to get into all of those pieces today, but these are connected, so we’re laying that out here today in the program. Now, that being the case, since the inception of human government, the ranking and the empowerment of human authority or government, those two words mean the same thing, the definition of the same, authority and government. Governments and empires have risen and fallen. We know that from scripture, we know that from history, correct? The Bible makes it clear that nations, they rise and they fall, not because somebody did it on their own, because God made it possible and he raises up nations, not for their purposes, but for his.

And when their purpose is fulfilled, that nation will fall into the dust pin of history. Scripture makes it clear also as well that rulers as well within those nations are raised up by the will of God. And when their purpose is fulfilled, they are removed. In Romans 13: one, the apostle Paul there identifies the cornerstone of all authority and governments when he says, “For there is no authority, no government or power.” Same words, ranked authority is what it means in the Greek, but of God, it says, “The powers or authorities are ordained by God. Their head and their authority is God himself.” Literally, the Apostle Paul states that there is a pyramid structure of authority where God is at the very top, no one hire. He’s delegated lesser authorities, but all of them accountable to him and he ranks them. That’s what the Greek word means there in Romans 12: one.

I’m at 13: one. “The ranked authorities are the individual, the family, civil government, and then added into this by Christ at his first coming is the establishment of the church, which Christ said that he would build and that those who trust in him as Christians should live out in their respective generations. But in every age, from the tower of Babel long ago, civil authorities have always sought the partnership of religion and religious rulers, and the same desire of civil rulers remain the same from Christ first coming to our very present day, and according to biblical prophecy will be culminated further in the immediate days ahead of us in the tribulation period with the emergence of the antichrist and of what? A one world religion, which will then be judged by Christ and government will then be run perfectly by Jesus Christ as king of the whole earth during the thousand year millennial kingdom.

Okay, that’s the big picture we’ve talked much about those elements. James, why do kings, presidents and earthly leaders always seek or seem to always seek an alignment with religious leaders? And can you give some examples?

James Spencer:

Yeah. So I think that there’s an intuitive sense that we’ve developed over time that a political ruler can’t legitimize himself or herself. And so for most of human history, the relationship between a political authority and a sacred order wasn’t really strategic. It was more ontological. It was understood as the way things actually are. So rulers would seek alignment with the sacred order. What they’re instituting in their rule is to be a reflection of some preexisting cosmic reality. And so the king isn’t using religion in that sense. He’s locating himself within that order that he believed he had received rather than invented. So we see this with many things in the Old Testament, right? The Israelite kings, for instance, if we look at Deuteronomy 17, which is one of those passages I just love, they’re supposed to write a copy of the Torah, read it every year.

That’s supposed to be approved by the priest, and then this is supposed to help them learn to fear the Lord. In other words, they’re to rule in alignment with the cosmic and social order that God has already established. It’s already there. They’re to reflect it. And we see something very similar in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Nebuchadnezzar would have done this in Babylon. Cyrus would have done this in Persian. These people weren’t thinking,” Oh, I need to snuggle up with religion to make sure that I have some sort of legitimacy. “It’s that they understood themselves to be the reflection of that social order or that sacred order that was already established, and they’re just working that out on the social side of their kingdom. Now obviously there’s exceptions to that, but as we look into the modern era, the process of secularization has really created a different dynamic.

And I think that Kevin Flatt wrote a book called Secularization, Sacred Order, or Social Order and World History. And what he argues is that secularization really is just about making sure that the social order isn’t grounded in anything except purely human considerations. And so there’s no real reference to a real or imagined higher power necessarily. This is in matters of degree. Obviously, we still have presidents who gesture toward God and think about God, but ultimately they’re based on these purely human considerations. And what that creates, I think, is in our day, a desire to align with religious authority in order to legitimate a presidency and draw constituency to it. I think it has a much more strategic rather than ontological sense, in other words. So it becomes more pragmatic, more transactional, and really just more a function of, ” I’d like to stay in office and this group will help me align with my constituency in a way that I couldn’t without it.

“That’s a little bit probably too drastic a statement, but I think that if we think about it in terms of degrees, that’s helpful, but I think now we’re moving into this age where we’re really seeing more of a utilitarian alignment and use of religion,

As opposed to what we saw in earlier periods, all the way back into like the Roman Empire, for instance, where you had a sacred order that when Christians were refusing to participate and worship the Roman gods, for instance, the problem wasn’t that they weren’t towing a line. The problem was that the Roman empire ran on a particular sacred order and the Christians were disrupting it. And

Sam Rohrer:

So

James Spencer:

There’s just a slightly different conception that we have of this now. And I think that we’ve moved into that utilitarian and transactional, very pragmatic relationship with religion. So we have to look at it and say, when a president aligns with a religious group, to what extent are they doing this out of a religious conviction versus to what extent are they really doing this because they’d like to get reelected sometimes?

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. And James, that’s great because in other programs, we’re going to talk more about the technocratic state. That name is in the title because that actually becomes a part of that transactional, a different purpose really for government to take place. But let me move on to that. When the church came into existence at Christ first coming, what did Jesus make clear was the purpose for his church, which he said he would build and why?

James Spencer:

Yeah. I mean, I think to keep it in the same sort of register that I’ve been talking, the church is to reflect the sacred order of the kingdom of God. And when we read the book of Hebrews, we tend to miss this a little bit, but Hebrews talks about all of these different structures, the temple, the tabernacle, the high priest, the sacrifices of all law. It talks about these in terms of being of shadows or copies of the heavenly realities. And that’s not a bad thing. These are all really good things, but they’re intended to be symbolically gesturing towards something that we haven’t yet achieved that we don’t yet have access to. That’s kind of what the church is supposed to be. We’re supposed to be incarnated in the world, showing the world what is to come. What does life look like under the authority of Jesus?

That’s what the church is supposed to be showing the world. That’s what it’s supposed to be proclaiming. And as we make disciples, which is part of our vocation, what are we really doing? Well, we’re pulling other people underneath the authority of Christ. We’re helping them understand how to live in observance with all Christ commanded. And in doing so, we’re aligning them with that sacred order where Christ is atop, the triune God is ruling over all things. We know what the kingdom of God is. And so that really is the role of the church. It’s to demonstrate to the world that there is another way of living, that there’s a way of living into reality, particularly the reality of the triune God, and that as we do that, we’re going to experience a peace that surpasses understanding and blessing beyond measure.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. Now I’m going to come back into the next segment because we’re at the break here, James and ladies and gentlemen. And I’m going to ask you, James, to explain what aspect of an understanding of God’s plan in order for authority, which includes civil government, but every person in all authority, including parents and individuals as well, and those in the church, certainly. But what is that principle that actually is strong enough to bring the arrogant Nebuchadnezzar to his needs, to understand that a servant’s heart is laid out in Romans 13 is what a leader needs to have and that kind of thing. So ladies and gentlemen, what would you say if I were to ask you, what is that biblical principle that is taught all the way, Old Testament, New Testament that is strong enough to bring those in positions of civil government into alignment with God’s plan?

All right, James, as we go further into this discussion here today, I want to ask you the question that comes off of what we’re talking about in the last segment, and that is regarding the role of the church. Anyways, let’s just go here and here would be the question. What is that one truth principle that is powerful enough to cause the arrogant ruler to be humble and have a servant’s heart or to hate lying or to run from anything that encourages bribery or coddles corruption on any level? All of those things I just mentioned there are specific things that the word of God says those in office should hate lying, pride, all of those kind of things, but what is that one principle? Can you identify that and why it’s so important that the church understands that they are really the purveyors and the communicators of this powerful principle?

James Spencer:

Yeah. So I think a couple of things. Number one, I think we shouldn’t discount the Holy Spirit in this. The entire Old Testament is the story of the people who had the law, who understood God instruction, and were incapable of following it. And so this is why we have passages like Ezekiel 36:26 and 27, where God tells Israel that he’s going to turn their hearts of stone into hearts of flesh and he’s going to put the spirit within their hearts and enable them to keep his laws, his commands, and his statutes. And so we need regeneration. We need the spirit. If we are going to keep God’s law, if we are going to live according to his order as faithfully as possible, the spirit is a necessity. And so we shouldn’t discount regeneration and acceptance, a deep recognition of the gospel. That’s number one. I think number two though, because we do see instances where rulers do good things.

We see, I would go to something like Cyrus and Persia who allows the Jews to go back into land, the Judeans to go back and rebuild the temple. This is something that is done in accordance with God’s will. And I think what we see there is, number one, that God is working through this ruler. There’s still an act of God that we need to be cognizant of, but I think the other side of this is there’s just a sense that there’s an alignment between what one understands as being good, true, and beautiful, and what one does in a governing mode. And I think that there has to be a sense in which we are accountable to God to live according to that reality, that if we don’t live according to … Even if rulers don’t accept the triune God, what I think rulers really need to have a deep sense about is this, that if we don’t do what’s good, if we don’t do what’s true, if we don’t promote what’s beautiful, there are negative consequences that none of us want to live with.

And I think if rulers don’t have that, that there’s no chance that they’re going to do what is good or right or beautiful. Justice is going to be selective justice. Righteousness is going to be selective righteousness. And while I can appreciate the idea that we need to have rulers who have a sense, the way it was usually phrased historically in the United States is that we want rulers who believe that there are going to be consequences for their actions in this life, in the afterlife. I appreciate that, and I do think that’s one mechanism that would help, but I think nowadays where the way society has sort of shifted, I think part of what we have to reckon with is that there have to be temporal consequences for doing what is wrong. There has to be accountability here and now, as opposed to hoping that we have rulers who are going to be accountable in the hereafter.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. James, I think that’s excellent. And I want to throw in here, if I can, ladies and gentlemen, when I was in office, one of the first things I did when I was elected was to say to the Lord, “How are you going to hold me accountable?” Now, I have my votes, that’ll be on the record forever, have things I say in the floor and debate, things I do. Okay, now that was for me in office, but anybody in office should be thinking the same thing, and I’ve talked to many. And I say, “What is that that I’m supposed to do? ” Well, Romans 13 and Peter, what’s he talk about? Enact justice. What is justice? It’s composed of praising those who do well righteously, according to how God interprets it, and punishing those bring to justice those who do evil as God intends it to be.

Why? Because we’re all servants of God, minister of God’s Roman 13. Therefore, I’m going to give an account to God. King Solomon summarized this in Ecclesiastes 12:13 and 14 when he said, “Now let’s consider the whole matter. What’s the duty of man?” Fear of God, keep his commandments. Why? For God’s going to bring into judgment every work and every secret thing. All right, that is the sense of accountability. Who communicates that or should? The church comes right off the pages of God’s word. Why? Because we are all going to stand before God as judge, okay? All right. I’m going to put that in and just add and augment what you’re saying, James, because it is very practical. Now, let’s move into this because in every age, human government attracts people who pursue power and riches and influence. And I’ve found that if someone is not bound by that accountability concept and principle, when they get into office and they get the benefits of office and people coddle them and tell them how wonderful they are, they soon lose any fear of God that they may have unless they are really rooted in God’s word and they end up becoming very autocratic.

All right. Now, if nobody’s there to tell them and remind them, “Hey, there is a God above, there’s a judge in heaven, Jesus Christ is going to … You’re going to answer to him.” All right, then there’s no limit to that. And according to George Barna, had him on our program many times, James, he said very clearly, 94% of Americans, the religion in America today is syncretism. It’s a little bit of everything. Only 4% of Americans hold a biblical worldview. So that being the case, there’s not much of a church or people who actually are thinking like God thinks and holding and embracing the word of God as authoritative because they’ve made themselves little gods. That’s the essence of Georgia’s surveys. Now here, James, why do people always seek something or someone to worship, which some rulers always seem to know and which I’m going to say they appeal, but there’s something there that goes together where we have a tendency to worship others or ourself, not the God of heaven.

James Spencer:

Yeah. I mean, I think we’re all conditioned to pay attention to something. So if we think about attention and we think about it as a focus on what we want, a focus on what we’re concerned with in the moment, the more we focus on something, the more we’re concerned with it in the moment, the more other things are going to be bracketed out of our vision. There are plenty of neurological studies that actually show that there are people with these attention disorders, these structural brain problems that for them, essentially the things that they are not focused on that are right in front of them don’t exist anymore. And you can kind of get this idea, if you’re driving in your car, sitting in your chair, wherever people are listening to this, if you just take a minute and think about your right foot, you probably weren’t thinking about your right foot until I said it, but as soon as I say it and you start focusing on your right foot, now you’re feeling that right foot in a different way than you were before.

So that’s the way attention tends to work. We tend to attune into something and we tend to focus on it and as we focus on it, that is what we’re saying is of value in that moment. This is the most important thing in the room. It’s the thing that we need to hold onto and grasp hold of. And that is functionally worship. It’s not primarily an emotional experience or religious ritual. It is like a fundamental mechanism by which we’re formed. We tend to pay attention to things. And so as we pay attention to those, those become the most important thing, that is what we’re orienting our behavior toward, and that functionally is worship. And so I think the reason why the Christian story isn’t really an optional decoration for human life, it’s because like we have to learn to reorient our attention so that in any given situation, we’re always responding to God.

He is the center of our attention. He is the most relevant. He’s infinitely more relevant than anything we could ever encounter otherwise. And when we don’t have that sort of recognition, when we’re not operating in that register, we will ultimately find something else to follow. We’ll find something else to worship. And so I think a lot of it is just a matter of really, as we look around the world, what we tend to do is we say, “Well, I’ve done my prayers. I’ve done my Bible reading. That was my God time. Now I’m in this other time.” And what we’ve got to do is start consolidating that back in. It’s all God’s time. We’re giving all of it to him. And so anything we do, we are always paying attention to God and we’re responding to the situation, not because we feel like it’s the most urgent thing to do.

We’re responding to God from within the situation. And in that way, we learn to love God, love neighbor, love the world around us in a way that is really attuned to God and who he is. It’s all an act of worship. That’s a very difficult thing for us to pull off, especially as our attention is sort of pulled in a variety of directions nowadays.

Sam Rohrer:

It is indeed. And what you’re saying there, James, is that if we are a true believer, we’re a part of the church. So whether we are an individual with our neighbors or within our family, or if God puts and raises up, because we know God raises up all those in positions of authority, so whether somebody’s a pastor or whether somebody’s a president, the Their position and their influence becomes much broader and it becomes more public, but the demands and the temptations are the same. Ladies and gentlemen, are they not? They really are. To what extent are we, well, modeling what God’s purpose is, Christ’s purposes for the church? Put it in this way, a moral auditor, taking what God says and reflecting it to those around us. And if we’re president or a senator or a congressman in that position, whatever. To what degree are we doing that?

And to what degree is the church? Actually doing what it’s supposed to do. We’ll come back, we’ll conclude and wrap up some comments and some things here. Okay. As we go into the final segment now, we have a lot yet to do. I just want to remind you that Dr. James Spencer’s my guest today. He has a website at usefultogod.com or if you want to see what happens there to DL Moody Center, that he’s also the president of that organization. That’s moodycenter.org. So usefultogod.com, moodycenter.org. And in this theme today in which we’re dealing, again, the topic was the metastasizing technocratic state, governance, technology, and the disappearing church. It said the primary emphasis would be on the role of the church and why it is kind of like not doing what it should be doing. And I gave some examples at the beginning. Also talking about governance, I’ve referred to some research done on the past four presidents, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George Bush, and then technology, because that’s the part that feeds into the technocratic state.

We’re going to do some future programs where we’re going to build these out because really they have to be considered together because they’re all kind of pieces of the same puzzle that are being implemented and we really can’t understand what’s going on today unless we understand these things. So this is kind of like an initial program here to get out these concepts. But James, let’s go here because I want to ask you this. When I did a study of history of our past four US presidents and I commented on some other things, one of the things I found was that each of them had their own approach for change. We talked about that in the first segment. Each had a clear and identifiable strategy also though for how to use the church to accomplish their goals and their approach to being, as they all kind of alluded and said, a CEO in government, being the president, being viewed as a top of the executive branch.

They view themselves as a CEO. And for a long time, we’ve been talking about we need somebody in business with business experience to run this government more than somebody else. Those are the ideas. Now, none of them, none of these four were their concept of the church and the role of government, none of them were biblically based. And they never talked about in terms of what does God say. None of them. For instance, but you can see the addition, the way it worked. For instance, G.W. Bush, George Bush, viewed himself as the CEO of faith-based initiatives. Remember that, everybody? And he appealed to who? Evangelical base, where he integrated the church directly into the machinery of government. His version of change was a partnership between him, the CEO, and the sanctuary, the church. Okay. That was his approach. Barack Obama came on the scene and he envisioned himself as the CEO of his term was universal values.

He presented change as a reclaiming of religious rhetoric from the political right. He was trying to pull it back from the political right. And he framed faith as a driver, as he said, for social justice and collective hope. And he appealed primarily to the black church in America. Now, all I’m saying right now is not my opinion. It’s just the way it was. Now, Joe Biden viewed himself as the CEO of decency and restoration. That’s what he said. And from that, he used his personal Roman Catholic faith to present change as he termed it a healing process. And he framed the church as a sanctuary for the wounded national soul. Then there came Donald Trump. In both the first and current term, he presented himself as the CEO of religious protection, and he appealed to pastors, and as he termed the defender of the faith.

Donald Trump presented change as a protective wall between the church and a hostile, secular, deep state. All right. So everything I said there, it’s good to keep that all in perspective because all of that was true. James, what comments would you add to my observation of these historical facts and how the church has altered or been altered in its biblical role and perhaps become a tool versus its role as moral auditor and then flow right into that and say, all right, if the church does not, has not been salt and light, what’s the actual consequence that happens to our literal freedoms and everything we tend to take for granted here in America?

James Spencer:

Yeah. So I would say that each president really did correctly identify that the church has a cultural and immoral authority and that the church can in some ways be aligned with government to the extent that government is seeking the good of society. There’s an interesting passage in Jeremiah where the Babylonian exiles are told to seek the welfare of their cities because as those cities prosper, so will they prosper. And so part of it is sort of an understanding that you are where you are, you’re not supposed to fight against this. We are supposed to work with our government and our authorities. And so Christian political participation is not a bad thing, but I think what each one of the presidents really got wrong, and ultimately what probably the church got sucked into is this. I think each one of the presidents said the church exists to advance what I’m already doing.

I have an agenda and I would like to employ the church in that agenda. As opposed to saying the church is not simply a partner. It’s not simply a group that I can rely on to help me get done what I want to get done. It’s going to hold me accountable. It’s going to resist me at certain points. It’s going to speak prophetically to me. It is an autonomous entity that sits under the same authority that I do and as such, it doesn’t answer to me. It answers to God. And I think that that subtle shift, Sam, is what we’re having trouble with, right? We do both sit under the authority of God. The church is not under Donald Trump. The church is not under any president. The church is under God. We answer to him and that should change the way that we speak in the world.

It shouldn’t preclude us from partnering. It shouldn’t preclude us from working with others who are also doing good, who are also seeking justice, but it should condition the way we think about that because we’re not just interested in doing good. We’re looking to point beyond that good to the God who is that good source. And so our proclamation, our prophetic critiques, our confession that Jesus is the Lord, these are crucial aspects that we can’t give up, even as we’re working with other groups that are doing good. So to me, it’s that distinction between a president saying, “Wow, the church is really great. It’s going to help me advance my political agenda,” versus saying, “The church is a help and a hurt because at some point it’s going to call me out on my bad behavior.”

Sam Rohrer:

All right. And James, I think that brings us right up to the end. I think that is excellent. And in every regard, James, it’s really back to what we said with accountability. Each individual, I, you, me, all those listening will give an account to God for what they do in their choices, in their actions, in their speech, and how they have responded to Jesus Christ as God’s only way to heaven. So as a parent will give an account for how I function in relationship to what God expects as a parent, as a pastor in the pulpit, as the church, as God has laid it out, as those in office, and anytime we short circuit God’s plan, we get ourselves in trouble and we violate accountability, don’t we?

James Spencer:

Yes. Yeah. And I think that’s … When we’re thinking about the way we need to be thinking about this as the church, again, we go back to the most familiar passage probably to many Christians, Matthew 28: 18 through 20, right? It’s the great commission. Jesus begins that by saying that he has been given all authority on heaven and earth. Therefore, we are to go and make disciples. That means that as we make disciples, we are drawing them under the authority of Christ and we’re teaching those disciples to observe all Christ commanded. We sit under his authority. That is our role. And so we need to be aligning our behavior such that we are demonstrating Christ’s authority on earth, not bowing to earthly authority.

Sam Rohrer:

There we go. That’s a great way to close the program. That is the question, ladies and gentlemen, we pose all the time. Is God’s word authoritative or not? To only about 4% of the people in America, is God’s word authoritative? That is the problem at its heart. Is God’s word all true or is it not? Well, what do people think when they see your life and listen to your words?