Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today is a special episode since it is Independence Day in The States. I, I thought about this for a while and racked my brain trying to figure out what to talk about as there there's just so much going on in my head right now about, about The United States. I am actually recording this episode in mid January and in light of recent events with Iran, it really helped to solidify what I wanted to talk about. Before I get into the topic for today, I do want you to know, and this is important because some people might think that the way that I talk means that I hate The United States Of America.

And that is not at all true, and it it kinda disappoints me that a lot of times when you acknowledge The United States' faults that at least for for a lot of people, especially people in my conservative Christian community, that acknowledging faults and critiquing is the equivalence of hatred and anti patriotism. And that's unfortunate because, you know, Jesus says that it's when you shine the light that darkness recedes and if you're not able to shine light, then darkness is able to fester and and advance. And that's kind of what I feel I feel happens and part of the reason that injustices go on is because we are, whether we say it or not, many Americans, especially in my group, are nationalistic. Maybe not to to like a certain extent that you might think of of nationalists, but we are we are nationalistic. It goes beyond mere patriotism to nationalism.

So please know that I am thankful to have grown up in The United States. I'm thankful for the freedoms that I do have. I'm thankful for the blessings and the comforts and all of that. But that doesn't mean that I can't recognize how some of those comforts and freedoms impact the rest of the world and how they were obtained and who they were obtained for and whatnot. So, I don't hate The United States Of America, but today is going to be a reality check if you think that The United States is perfect.

So, hopefully that's out there and you understand where I'm coming from. That's my caveat here. We'll just go ahead and get into it. I will try to keep this as dispassionate as possible and not get frustrated or angry or anything else because this isn't going be railing against America, it's about seeing the world as it truly is. Years ago, my elevation of The US began to crumble.

You know, I used to think this idea that we are a unique nation, we're a Christian nation, we are a just nation, you know all of those things, we might have a fault here or there, slavery kind of being the main fault that we've had in our history. But by and large, we've had a lot of good Christian moral people trying to do good stuff, right, for everybody. We're founded on greatness. I was a typical kid. I, like most other kids, was insulated from hearing pretty much anything negative about The United States in school and in church.

My church had the American flag, we had lots of veterans, and you just didn't hear anything negative about The United States. In fact, not only did we not hear anything negative, but everything we heard was positive. And if if anything wasn't positive, it was the fact that there was a Democratic party in opposition to our Christian Republican party. That was the problem with United States, the the other people. And you might say, well, didn't you learn about Native Americans and slaves?

And yeah, we did, but even those things were were whitewashed in various ways. You know, the the true numbers of Native Americans killed wasn't given, and there was victim blaming. Well, the Native Americans were were bad too, and look how brutal and uncivilized they were, which isn't was maybe true about some of the tribes, but certainly not all of them. Others were doing it too. Right?

The French and and Spanish. I mean, they did bad things to Native Americans. There were some nice people. Right? William Penn.

I was from Pennsylvania. William Penn was nice, but that was because he was a Quaker and a pacifist. But, I mean, I'm sure there were other people who were nice to the Native Americans too, somewhere. We avoided primary source quotes for thoughts and rationales about the groups. I mean, we didn't hear what McKinley had to say about about other countries.

I don't know that he really talked about Native Americans, but he certainly talked about Haitians and some other people. But we didn't hear was it Andrew Jackson? I don't know. I forget which president. But we didn't hear any primary source quotes of of people justifying the barbarism against Native Americans and not viewing them as humans.

And then there was even this implication that the spread of religious freedom and independence for everybody who wasn't Native American kind of justified all of those things, at least retroactively. And you could do the same thing for the slaves. Right? The true number of slaves, you didn't really know that slavery was was even bigger than you could have imagined that it was. There was victim blaming.

Well, I mean, black people sold each other. Africans sold each other. We wouldn't have had the slave trade in in nearly the quantity that we did if if the Africans would have just been nice to each other and not gone to war and and sold each other despite the fact that we encouraged that and facilitated it and exacerbated it. Other others were doing it too. Belgium and Portugal, I mean other countries did the same thing that we did, it was just status quo.

There were some nice people, there were some nice masters to their slaves who treated their slaves really well. In fact, slaves wouldn't have wanted to leave the plantation of some masters because they were so kind to them. We again avoided primary source quotations for the thoughts and rationales about the groups and we implied that where we are today essentially justifies it or at least negates how evil slavery was. And all of the black people fighting for, you know, these quote rights that they're fighting for today just need to get over it because slavery is, you know, a hundred and fifty years in the past. Sorry if that's not your experience growing up, and I know that sounds really calloused and harsh because it is, but that was my experience and I guarantee you that's the experience that a lot of other people have.

A lot of people. We whitewash American history and that was just those were just two examples, you know? And when I started to kind of see the cracks in in just these two things, I grew up and I started thinking for myself and I I discovered that The United States is a legacy of horrors. In the Trail of Tears, okay, that involves Native Americans too, but that one incident in and of itself is horrendous. The the way that we treated not just warriors, but women and children and old people, and just massacred them essentially on a death march.

The treatment of Chinese immigrants on our railroad, as well as other immigrants, but especially the Chinese out west was horrible. The civil rights and and the things that we did. I was just reading Ronald Cider's book, Nonviolent Action, and he he's kind of going into the civil rights movement and you know, excuse my ignorance here, but the way that the way that I envisioned civil rights in my head was, you know, there were maybe a couple tumultuous years and there were maybe like one or two, probably more than one or two, but like five or six kind of sit ins or or big things that that went on and then the scene just changed. But there were decades of things going on where where people were protesting. There was at least a century of lynchings and terror, especially if if blacks tried to vote or or tried to get ahead.

There it it was just terrible. And and reading Sider's book, I I realized not only that and how long that struggle went on, but, you know, the thing that changed the hearts and minds of people wasn't the fact that black people were getting hurt. It was essentially the fact that some white people who went with them were getting hurt too. There was in one of the, I think it was a Freedom Ride, there was a white priest from like Boston or something who who was beaten up and eventually died. And that kind of ticked people off up north enough to to really care enough to try to legislate stuff.

And and on top of that, the the other thing that changed people's minds was it wasn't until kids started getting beaten and put in jail and torn up by dogs and and fire hoses sprayed on them. It wasn't until that that hearts and minds started to to really shift more so. And that that was towards the end of the civil rights movement when when the kids started coming out in droves. But kids, like young kids and teenagers, And and in one of these, they were they were driving the kids, it said two miles to jail, they had to walk because they they couldn't fit them all in in their vehicles, and they were using cattle prods to to drive kids two miles running or at a fast walk to go to jail because they were non violently marching. I I think that one instance was for voting rights.

That was my parents' generation. My both of my parents were alive when this happened. Like this isn't this isn't just, you know, archaic United States, pre 1776. This is my parents' United States. Then of course we have Japanese internment camps.

We have, starting to get into things that are less known, we've got the Tuskegee experiments where they purposefully injected, I believe it was black men, with syphilis, didn't tell them about it, just to see kinda what happens, like how do we treat this, what works, what doesn't. And they essentially condemned innocent men to die. They used prisoners for experiments. They let's see what else. Oh, yeah.

This one's interesting. Supreme Court case. Like, we're not talking about just some small riff raft who decide to to do something crazy in in some podunk town. Talking about a Supreme Court case, Buck versus Bell, which approved the sterilization of essentially poor people. Now they said it was like mentally mentally handicapped individuals or people with extremely low IQs, so supposedly retardation.

But they I found an interview on YouTube of one of the individuals who was forcefully sterilized. And, you know, the truth is, it wasn't it was really against poor people because basically the ways that they assessed people, it really had nothing to do with like mental assessment and really figuring out if they had any disabilities. It was extremely skewed towards basically your socioeconomic status and whether your parents were considered deplorable or not. So they forcefully sterilized a bunch of a bunch of people. And in the Supreme Court case, Buck versus Bell, Oliver Wendell Holmes famous quote from that is, you know, as he's ruling against I don't remember who, Buck or Bell.

But he he said, one generation of imbeciles is enough. You And we're not gonna I'm not gonna allow there to be another generation of imbeciles, so get sterilized because then we don't have to deal with any more of your kind. And we were so good at the Eugenics Movement over here in The United States that the Nazis actually based a bunch of what they were doing in their Eugenics program on what we were doing in The US. We had Nazi officials, future Nazi officials, who came over and took notes from what we were doing and implemented some of the same programs. In the Vietnam era, there was something known as McNamara's Folly and you can can find some YouTube lectures on this as well.

But McNamara's Folly was General McNamara decided that, hey, we need we need more bodies over in in Vietnam and he lowered the IQ level significantly in in terms of who they were able to draft. And what they ended up doing is basically drafting people with special needs and they would be able to use them as as fodder. Because in in Vietnam, the way that generals and and everybody got kind of accolades was body counts. Vietnam was all about body counts. Great great book that I I really like, if you don't mind colorful language, is it's called Steal, s t e e l, Steal My Soldier's Hearts, by Lieutenant Colonel, I believe, or Colonel David Hackworth.

And he just talks about the the ridiculousness of of what they were having people do, but they'd have them essentially walk through known minefields to count bodies after a firefight because they wanted to know how many did they kill. McNamara essentially recruited the mentally handicapped to use his fodder for those sorts of sorts of outings. Otabanga. Otabanga, did you know that in The United States, I believe it was the early nineteen hundreds that we actually put a black man, I think he was an aborigine from Australia. We had a black man in the Bronx Zoo on display.

He was he was an exhibit, like, not to tell us about his aboriginal ancestors and culture. He was in a cage in a zoo that people would pay to go and see next to, you know, other animals. We we put human beings only a hundred years ago. We put a human being in a zoo in The United States. Around that same time, and and saving the absolute worst for last, if you won't be able to get this one out of your head, so you may wanna skip a minute or two.

But the story of Jesse Washington, sure there were there were many many lynchings that went on with with blacks especially in the South. But Jesse Washington's case is extremely horrific. It's not only horrific because of the things that were done to him, it's horrific because of the scale on which it was done. So in in Texas, I forget which city, I think it might have been I think it was Dallas, but I'm not sure. But Jesse Washington was accused of raping a white woman.

And I I don't know if he did it or not and I don't know if he really can know because of course, he was gonna be found guilty no matter what. But regardless of whether whether he did this or not, he after he was found guilty, he came out of the courthouse to a mob of 19,000 people. I think that was the number. So 10,000 plus people were waiting. And now you figure these are people in the South back in 1900, like nineteen o six, I don't remember the exact year.

But these these people in the South are almost certainly all or almost all identifying as Christians. Most of them probably go to church. They take Jesse Washington and they hang him up. From my understanding, they don't put the the the they use a chain and they don't put it around his neck. They put it around his arms.

And they hang him up and they light a fire underneath of him. And they repeatedly raise and lower and raise and lower him, preventing him from death. You know, when when he's he's maybe gonna pass out or something, they lift him up and give him a little bit of a breather so they can just lower him back down. When they lower him down, of course, it's really hot and there's a chain hanging above him and that he he repeatedly just tries to climb up the chain with his arms, puts his arms above his head and tries to pull himself up the chain. They don't like that and so what they do is they, one by one, over time, they cut off all of his fingers so that when he tries to climb the chain, he can't climb the chain.

It's just the stumps of his hands slapping against the chain. He can't pull himself up as he's lowered over the fire. And at one point, somebody in the crowd castrates him while he is is hung down. And it takes Washington a long time to die, A a horrendous and torturous death to 19,000 Christians, Americans. I am I know that I am leaving out some horrors here and I'm sure that I have only scratched the surface of the horrors that that lie in The United States.

One of the main points here so far is that some of these things sure are done by by an individual or a small community of people like say McNamara's Folly. I'm sure that was small group of powerful individuals in the army who who made that decision or perhaps the Tuskegee experiments. But a lot of these things are done by large groups of people or groups of people who are representative of a very large idea or belief that is is within the American population. These these aren't outlier sorts of things. These are these are things that these are incidents that bubble to the surface and show what's in the hearts of American citizens and government.

You know, all of those sorts of things, all of the the things that I learned about The United States that I just mentioned. They they primed me to learn more about The US on an international scale because everything I've talked about so far was right here in the homeland of The United States. I I didn't even begin to look internationally at this point, but I've been on a Noam Chomsky kick lately and learning about the history of The United States and our complicity in world violence, poverty, and death across the world. And the picture is is no prettier. In fact, it's it's even uglier in terms of the amounts of people we've affected and killed.

Now, most of these things aren't, let's say like Jesse Washington. It's not looking somebody in the face and torturing them and just hating them as you as you watch them die slowly. It it might be dropping bombs or or putting sanctions on something or making impact in some political way that starves a nation or produces a century of abject poverty. So it might look a little bit different but in terms of scale, it's it's far far worse. Maybe not than than native Americans, probably probably worse than that.

But it it's certainly certainly bigger than all of those other things combined. So I I won't be able to elaborate here on on everything both because it's way too much and because I I've really just started to dig and to learn. But with The US Attack On Iran in January, I I did think that it would be good just to to use this as a springboard for conversation, to to just take a look at one US intervention or action on the world stage. I was at a party a few nights ago and we were talking about Iran and Soleimani, the the Iranian general who was just bombed. And of course, everyone at the party was was happy that a quote terrorist had been killed.

And but when I when I asked a number of the older individuals in the room why they thought Iran hated us so much, And the common answer was what I was taught when I grew up, which was that, you know, they were Muslim and they hated the freedom that we had in the West and they hated our our depravity. Now certainly, I can understand their hatred of our depravity. You just have to watch some commercials and TV shows to see see such depravity. But at the same time, I don't I don't think a lot of Muslims are really all that much different at at heart. I think there are a lot of them who are human.

I would assume all of them are human and probably have have a human heart. And if it is, then it's it's depraved and and problematic. But nevertheless, you know, the big thing that we think is, well, they they hate us for our freedom because we have more than they do. But nobody, of course, knew the history of Western intervention and imperialism in The Middle East. Starting at least as early as World War one and the discovery of oil just before that which influenced the way that World War one was fought and how alliances were made and how territory was conquered and and all of that.

You know, nobody knew, nobody in this room that I was at knew that The US had overthrown a an important word here, a democratically elected leader in 1953. Why did The United States overthrow a democratically elected leader? Because British Petroleum, since World War one or right after, had conquered and therefore won oil. Right? They basically controlled oil reserves in the country of Iran.

And so, as a country said, look, you're taking advantage of us and you're basically selling our resources to other people. And it's time that Iran has control of Iran's oil, so we need you to get out. Well, the British of course didn't like that because that was that's a a big moneymaker for them. And so they asked The United States for help. And the way that The US helped, of course, is going to be through through trying to overthrow this democratically elected official.

And nobody in this room that I was in knew that The United States backed a coup in Iran in 1953 and installed a dictator. And they installed him because he was very pro Western and was gonna be friendly with the oil company and with The United States. And he was harsh to his own people's, people didn't like him. And that paved the way for Western resentment and the religious coup in 1979. So why does Iran hate us?

Maybe because we helped another foreign power try to exploit them and the way that we did this was we overthrew a democratically elected leader and subjected them to twenty, twenty five years of oppression from a leader that they didn't want. So Iran got tired of being exploited by the West, and we got tired of a country who got tired of us exploiting them, and so we took care of it. So in that scenario, who's the anti democratic terrorist? It it seems to me that The United States in that instance is is pretty clearly at fault and is anti democratic and, you know, maybe depending on how you define terrorist, maybe not a terrorist there, but that's a big problem. And that's not an isolated incident.

When you start looking at our overthrow of democratically elected officials around the world, particularly in South America and some of the the islands like Haiti. Our history is filled with that. But anyway, let's let's get back to Iran. So Soleimani and Iran may have acted out against the West, and they may be responsible for many American deaths. And even if The United States did bad things to them, that would not justify terrorist actions like let's say nine eleven where you go and you you bomb Twin Towers and you kill lots of civilians.

You know, that's that's terrorism and that's something that we don't want anybody to do. Now The United States, we kill lots of people, civilians, but we anyway, it doesn't make it right. Just because one country does it, doesn't make it right. Nevertheless, through through our sanctions and our actions, we are responsible for Iranian deaths as well. Why do why do American deaths count more than any other human death?

Especially for Christians. For Christians, why do American deaths count more? They shouldn't. And one of the main allegations against Soleimani is that he was selling or giving weapons to Iraq to kill US Soldiers. I believe it was quoted around like 700 soldiers were killed that we could directly trace back to Soleimani or Iranian weapons or IED parts or whatever.

So at least 700 just from what the Iraqis used. And I'm sure it could be could be more. But yeah. And that justifies us calling Soleimani a terrorist, yet The US does this all the time. I remember when I was, in college, you see this news report about how, you know, Afghanistan is using US weapons against The United States.

Where do they get US weapons? We gave it to them when they were fighting Russia. So we sold weapons to another country to fight an enemy that we didn't wanna directly fight, and we we gave them weapons to fight instead. Well, according to our standards, that's why Soleimani is considered a terrorist, at least one of the reasons. Does that mean that The United States is a terrorist nation?

It seems to me that it does, if that's how we're gonna define define terrorist. We've got a double standard on morality when it comes to how how we excuse The United States. So in summary here, we initiate coups against democratically elected officials, we assassinate officials, we provide weapons and support for proxy wars against our enemies, and we exploit countries for our financial gain. What does that make us many times? So what is the point in saying all this?

Because I'm sure by now, I told you that I don't hate The United States and by this point, I've probably done a lot of convincing you that I lied at the beginning. But I I really don't. I'm I'm not trying to get you to hate The United States either. I'm still not ungrateful for the comforts and freedoms that I have at the expense of American lives who who at times have secured that for me and the lives of many other people around the world too. Because we have exploited other countries, I can live in comfort, and I do like that comfort.

It is nice. Because we've overthrown democracies elsewhere, I have comfort. I like comfort. That's nice. Because we've assassinated people that we don't like, Jesuit priests and democratically elected officials and dictators, bad bad people too.

I have comfort. I like comfort. It's nice. So I am thankful for the wonderful things I have, but I am not thankful for the way that those things were obtained. And to call The United States out for its evil is is a necessary thing for Christians to be able to do.

So let me get to just a a few points that I I think Christian Americans should draw from from our discussion today. Number one, you need to recognize that The United States is not the first benevolent and just empire in history. The US certainly is an empire. And empires, because they they fear collapse and because they they love power, remain empires and expand their empires because they exert power over the world. And power in the world is most often exerted through violent force or the threat of violent force or violent economic force, which most people don't think is violence, but it is.

To to put sanctions on a country effectively starves that country if the sanctions are severe enough. Sanctions can kill more people than than bombs can. If you get the time, one of the things that you should check out is Noam Chomsky's discussion on Haiti. I remember talking with a relative and he had taken a mission trip to Haiti and he talked about just how horrible the poverty was there. Just said, I just don't understand it.

Like, how do you get that poor? Well, when you learn about the history of Haiti and The United States as well as France and and some other countries' intervention in Haiti and the way that they took advantage of it and it's a long story. But when you hear that, you're like, Haiti's not that way because the people on the island are lazy. It's not that way because, you know, they've got a certain culture that they just they're just that way. Those people are just that way.

It's that way because in large part, we made it that way. And it's a terrible, terrible story. But it's just another it's just another thing that shows you that we are not the first benevolent and just empire because we're not benevolent and just most of the time. Much of the time. Some of the time.

I don't know. I I don't have statistics here, but we're pretty terrible. We like our comfort and we like freedoms at the expense of others. And by by freedom, what I've come to understand is that freedom usually means my ability to do what I want to do. Whereas if another country, if we had to really compete with them, bananas might cost more and groceries might cost more and that would influence my my ability to choose more things to buy and to live leisurely.

That's largely the type of freedom that that we get from a lot of our interactions with the world. Number two, in light of of our Just War series as well as our Memorial Day episode on the sacrifices of war, we need to be really careful about idolizing and worshiping military actions and military members. Just wanna remind you about Yoder's blank check mentality. Right? With this idea that, well, if the government decides to do it, then we just kinda need to go along with it.

Romans 13. Right? That's not true. We're citizens of another kingdom and sure, we submit to government but we don't obey it. Two very different things.

We submit where we can but we do not obey where it conflicts. So even if you are a just war adherent, our history should make you think twice about whether it's even possible for an empire like ours, filled with self interest to participate in a just war. Certainly, I would say every other country because they're human is filled with self interest. Yes. But when you are filled with self interest and you have the power to exploit others, chances are that's what you're gonna do.

You're gonna use the power that you have for your your self interest at the expense of others where you can at the expense of the powerless. If nothing else, you the the history of The United States should make you seriously consider every military action carefully as a Christian. I think it's really important to to play the devil's advocate. Don't don't be easily persuaded and don't have this just this beautiful vision of what The United States is in your head. Assume that The United States is like every other empire that came before it and self interested and unjust.

Assume that from the get go and critique every time they want to go to war. You critique that like you're an opponent saying, well, what about this and what about that and what about that? And you make sure that if you're a just word adherent that that you put United States military action through the ringer before you put a stamp on it. Because God is very very clear about his hatred of injustice and perpetuated injustice. As Christians, we should be upset by that too and not want to contribute to that.

Point number three, you need to realize that we are Babylon. United States is Babylon. Mackie does a really good job of discussing the theme of of Babylon in his Day of the Lord series. And and this idea of Babylon is prominent all throughout the Bible, especially in Revelation. We see it a lot in Revelation.

But what Mackie argues is that this idea of Babylon is not this idea of a specific nation Babylon. Sure, we do see this specific nation come up in the Old Testament, but what you often see it referenced as is it is symbolic of a of government, of the government in power, particularly the government in power when it expresses itself in wickedness. So like the statue made of various substances in Daniel, empires rise and fall, each one embodying various evils and injustices as they exert dominance and rule through violence and oppression. As citizens of Christ's kingdom, we must recognize our life is lived in Babylon as American Christians, but our allegiance is to the king, the same king that Iranian Christians have. We absolutely cannot ourselves allow ourselves to be indoctrinated so that we are quiet about the oppression of others in our land as we have all been for all of our history.

We are quiet about Native Americans. Are quiet about slaves. We are quiet about the Chinese. We are quiet quiet about the Irish and other immigrants. We are quiet about the poor.

We still are. We're quiet about the handicapped. We're quiet about the blacks. We are quiet about the immigrants. We our church has a history of being quiet.

And it's not just the American church. Take a look at Bonhoeffer and him being one of the lone voices in Germany, in the German church that sought power along with Germany and Hitler. That's the story of who we are. We we get the mark of the beast. We we side with Babylon.

We listen to false prophets. That's what we do. And knowing that though, having the Bible warn us about that and tell us about that time and time again, and and showing us that we have an allegiance to a different kingdom should change that for us. We, Christian, should be different. We cannot allow ourselves to be indoctrinated with this idea that our violence in the rest of the world is beneficent when it is often oppressive and for our own interest, especially our economic interest.

War the book War Is A Racket is a is another good source that you can take a look at on this. We are not to bow the knee to Babylon and uphold its structures over Christ. I'm sure that these things that I've said have been extremely offensive to many American Christians, particularly the conservative sort. But I I really hope that if if you've been disturbed by just my my simple relaying of facts for the the first half of this at least was was pretty much just me relaying facts about what has happened in The United States and what The United States has done in the world. If you've been disturbed by that, then I want you to self reflect about why you might be feeling anger towards me.

And if you haven't been disturbed by that and you feel like you have to defend every single thing that I've said, then I think you need to do some self reflecting there too because that's a problem. That seems to me to be an indicator that the nation is your idol. And that's not pointing fingers and and saying that you are wicked. That's that's my story. My nation was my idol.

Now, it's not. But I just have different idols. I'm human. I have a human heart. So this is this is not about throwing America, The United States under the bus and throwing political or national idolaters under the bus.

This is one Christian trying to help other Christians live in the kingdom, the Big K Kingdom while recognizing the pitfalls of Babylon. And the things that I've said about The United States are verifiable. Go look them up. Maybe I'm wrong about one or two things, which wouldn't invalidate all the things I said, and please let me know. But I don't think I am wrong about 9090% of it.

You know? Like I said, I am just starting out on this quest. So so certainly, I could be wrong about some things, At least the interpretation of some of the facts, but the facts are all out there. Go look them up. Also, have I said that is not an observable pattern from history in the Bible?

What nations have been good? What does the Bible say about nations? What have I said about our tendency to make idols of nations that isn't true of human nature since the fall? Now, if you are angry right now, you need to do some self reflecting and think about what is the source of that anger because God gives us emotions as indicators. And I know that when I'm angry with my kids or or with other people, most of the time it exposes an idol in my heart.

I'm angry with my kids when they get out of of bed when I put them in there, and they should listen, they should go to bed, but you know what? The reason I get enraged on the inside sometimes is because I idolize my free time. I idolize I idolize something else besides God and exhibiting Jesus Christ to my kids. Anger indicates idolatry most of the time, particularly when that anger is not a righteous anger of sorts against injustice, but when it is is a defense of something that we hold sacred in our lives. I wanna reiterate that I am extremely thankful for the life that I've lived here in The United States, the freedoms and comforts I have had.

But, you know, living in in Babylon and the empire of the day makes it easy to be blinded. And I don't think The United States, like I said before, is different than other nations. If The United States falls and China takes over, China will be Babylon. Right? Babylons have always existed and they always will till the end of time.

There's nothing unique about The United States and that's the important thing. There's nothing uniquely bad about The United States and other countries, people in other countries need to recognize that. But there's also nothing uniquely good about The United States. It follows the same pattern that all who lord power follow, which is perpetuating injustice for one's own self interest. We in The United States, we were birthed in violent revolt, we expanded through violence, and we maintained dominance through violent action.

Our help to other nations is by and large only done as it is a help to ourselves. That's why we help quote help Iraq because it has our oil and why we don't help the genocidal victims in Africa. We mask our oppressive actions as benevolent, and we tell our people that fiction, and most of us believe it. As a Christian, our freedom doesn't come from earthly government but from our identity in Christ, and that identity is not limited and discriminatory like our American freedom. It's generously made available to all peoples inside the borders of a nation and outside.

As Christians, we need to live in light of our true allegiance, to be cautious about governments which desire to become our gods, and live in love and peace towards all those made in God's image as we seek to expand the kingdom, not to hoard it and isolate it. Challenge you to listen to some of the resources below or read some of the resources below, do your own historical research, and do a lot of self reflection. And after you've done those things, feel free to contact me to critique something that I've done or said, information that I've given, or just to chat more. But that's all for now. So peace because I'm a pacifist.

When I say it, I