{"id":43028,"date":"2021-01-23T14:38:08","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T20:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=43028"},"modified":"2021-01-23T14:41:11","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T20:41:11","slug":"culture-warrior-or-kingdom-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/culture-warrior-or-kingdom-warrior\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture Warrior or Kingdom Warrior?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Jesus&#8217;s famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), as so convincingly explained by the late Dallas Willard in his <em>The Divine Conspiracy<\/em>, Jesus illustrates <strong>the goodness of the reborn heart<\/strong>, the moral make-up of a true citizen of the Kingdom of God. Not only does such a person refrain from adultery, but he refrains from actively lusting for others. Not only does such a person not kill, but he doesn&#8217;t even insult or despise others. Not only does such a person not take revenge, but he even loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him. He&#8217;s eager to forgive others for their sins against him, conscious that he frequently needs God&#8217;s forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a aria-label=\"Jesus-is-God apologist (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-124-a-challenge-to-jesus-is-god-apologists\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" class=\"ek-link\">Jesus-is-God apologist<\/a>, YouTube star, and professed psychopath Dr. David Wood recently had his channel de-monetized by YouTube, which he replied to with something akin to a middle finger. You can see it here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"nv-iframe-embed\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube Demonetized My Channel after I Promoted Other Platforms\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fj_UxUhgQ7A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For culture warriors this is standard fare. He&#8217;s a victim fighting for justice in complete innocence while being assailed by dastardly and inexcusably wicked but powerful baddies. <strong>Admittedly, it is frustrating<\/strong> when YouTube censures one without really saying what the infraction was. I&#8217;m not a fan of the ruling class&#8217;s censoring ways, though I can understand why someone might think Wood&#8217;s aggressive and sometimes crude mocking of Muhammad and Islam goes too far. But to call this <strong>&#8220;censorship&#8221; <\/strong>isn&#8217;t quite right; YouTube is not a government, and Wood has long enjoyed and profited from the benefits of being on that commercial platform. Perhaps it&#8217;s more like offending the manners of one&#8217;s host &#8211; a host whose manners you disagree with, of course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>But it struck me how in his culture warrior role Wood simply ignores Jesus&#8217;s aforementioned teachings. <\/strong>He harshly denounces the social media worker(s) who flagged his videos and demonetized his channel as problematic &#8220;some of the sickest people on the planet.&#8221; That&#8217;s a bit harsh, don&#8217;t you think? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But that&#8217;s just a warm-up. While Jesus&#8217;s teaches us not to wield the insult &#8220;fool&#8221; or &#8220;empty head&#8221; (maybe more equivalent to our word &#8220;dumbass&#8221;) and to love and pray for those who persecute us, Wood denounces his censors as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8230;the most revolting people in the world\u2026losers\u2026morally insane cowards\u2026ego-maniacal morons sitting in your safe-spaces\u2026power-tripping techno-sheep\u2026<strong>screw you and the narcissism that drives you<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Perhaps Dr. Wood needs to choose between being a Kingdom warrior and being a culture warrior <\/strong>&#8211; at least, the sort of culture warrior he&#8217;s been thus far, one who feels that the justice and importance of his cause warrants ignoring Jesus&#8217;s clear teachings. He would be well-advised to recall Jesus&#8217;s ending to that profound sermon:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like <strong>a wise man<\/strong> who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.<sup> <\/sup>And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like <strong>a foolish man<\/strong> who built his house on sand.<sup>&nbsp;<\/sup>The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell\u2014and great was its fall!&#8221;<\/p><cite>Matthew 7:24-27, NRSV<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, \u2018You fool,\u2019 you will be liable to the hell of fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-complaints","category-quotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43028"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43035,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43028\/revisions\/43035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}