The Christian Virtue of Patriotism

Kevin speaks to Sam Rust about whether patriotism is a good thing for Christians — and if so, what a patriot should think about MAGA, trade protectionism, nationalism, and America First. They discuss the positives, and negatives, of the USA…whether any central identity still remains to love…the gospel hope upon which America was founded…and whether it is possible to revive that heritage.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

This is Generations. I'm Kevin Swanson. And today the subject is about being grateful, thankful, and of course realistic about our condition and our position in history in this country where God has put us. Before we take steps towards getting involved with civil governments anywhere in the world, or complaining about it or resisting it, we need to first conduct a realistic assessment of the true magnitude of the evil and the good present in the state that affects the day-to-day life of the Christian. So we need to assess this realistically and honestly. Human society is not static nor is it monolithic. Remember, there is always some distribution of influence and power throughout a nation, regardless of how centralized political powers comes to be within a state or a nation. Moreover, the direction of a nation is not determined entirely by the civil government. Keep that in mind as well. It's not all about government. In fact, the morality of the state is determined by the broader culture, the educational institutions, the churches, the social situation, the quality of parenting, the media, the pop culture and movies and music. There are limits to what a single person or a body of leaders can do if they wish to control every action taken by every person in a certain country. So even the most powerful and despotic civil rulers are finite in their knowledge, skills, and power. Keep that in mind. While state officials are busy persecuting one Christian over here, they hardly have the energy or the resources to persecute the other 1,000 Christians within their borders. So remember, only God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. The modern bureaucracy is usually made of a large group of remarkably incompetent and fairly unmotivated people, certainly less competent than God. So let's not think too highly of what the state can actually pull off, despite its huffing and puffing, brave promises and bogeyman threats. Then also the civil government has little power to improve the morality of the nation or to get anybody to obey God. The state cannot regenerate the heart, and of course, its God-given duty is extremely limited. Nevertheless, the government can implement programs to push immorality and tear apart the character of the nation. This has been the legacy of almost every civil state since 1900. A realistic assessment of how bad things really are must take into account comparisons with other nations in the present or further back in history. Things were pretty bad under Nero in ancient Rome. Joseph Stalin killed off about 15% of Ukrainian population in the Holodomer back in 1932. Estimates vary a bit, but the communist Maoching Tong killed off at least 10% of the Chinese population during the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s, which is really a great face plant, is really what it was. Such proportions give current national populations would uh account for thirty-four million dead Americans, twenty-one million dead Brazilians, or seven million dead Brits. Now Cuba clocks in as one of the most tyrannical nations on earth. Presently there are about 1,000 political prisoners held in Cuban prisons. That's about 0.01 percent of the Cuban population. The questionable J6, January 6, 2020, trials in the U.S. resulted in the incarceration of at least 700 people and their subsequent pardon under President Donald J. Trump. That's about.0003 percent of the U.S. population, still orders of magnitude less than the communist Cuban tyranny. Also, the Christian must never be distracted by lesser issues when there are bigger issues at stake. For example, the U.S. media and certain interest groups have made quite a bit of hay out of stories relating to police brutality in recent years. Without question, a sinful world will produce bad actors, even among law enforcement officers. But while some nations will tolerate high levels of police brutality, this is hardly the case for our country. Taking into account the worst form of police brutality, official records indicate only twenty-two police officers were convicted of murder or manslaughter over fifteen years. That's close to one per year as compared to ten thousand to twenty thousand annual murder convictions in any given year, overall in U.S. courts, not to mention the millions of infant killings committed by legalized abortions. Media bias is especially obvious when covering certain stories and leaving others more serious issues out of the picture. The media distracts and diverts attention from the more substantial issues as defined by God's law, and the consumer is left with an imbalanced view of the world. The mainstream media and social media were largely responsible for inciting riots following the news coverage of several police brutality cases in the 2020s. The mob violence and mass vandalism in Portland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and St. Louis in the summer of 2020 resulted in 14,000 additional arrests and one to two billion dollars in property damage. The masses, you see, are easily diverted from the things that really matter. They jump to these conclusions. They take justice into their own hands. They argue for defunding the police, which happens to be a legitimate biblical function for government, basing their opinions on biased news reporting and little real data on incidents of police brutality and prejudice. They waste their time, their resources, energy, and passion on lesser things, straining at gnats and swallowing camels to use the language of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's talk about praetorism and gratefulness. We're to rejoice always and pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks. That's the will of God in Christ Jesus for us. Gratefulness is the lifestyle of the believer in all stations, times, and places where he finds himself. The Russian believer, the Chinese believer, the American believer, we're all called to gratefulness that we're not in hell. If our nation and state provides better conditions for liberty and prosperity than some others, this is by the grace of God. So let's be grateful for every liberty, for every righteous law, for every remnant of a Christian heritage, for every godly leader who contributed to this heritage in the past. If there be a balance of powers established for governments or a people in possession of a constitution or a bill of rights, or a national conscience resisting the wanton slaughter of innocent citizens, let's be grateful that Jesus Christ has made progress in the world. Oh, thanks be to God for these things. There are today sixty nations run by authoritarian dictators today, some of which may be more benevolent than others, but before the coming of Christ into the world, authoritarian chieftains and absolute monarchs, they ruled the world. Kings slaughtered their political competitors at will. Happened all the time. It was the default position for governments. Two thousand years later, almost every nation frowns on that kind of behavior. At least 70% of the world's nations now are blessed with some measure of a balance of powers. The Greeks and Romans dabbled with using the popular vote and balancing out the power of kings and emperors, but that didn't last for long. Alexander formed a military dictatorship in Macedonia and reasserted totalitarian power over Greece around 336 BC, beginning with the reign of Julius Caesar in 49 B.C. The Caesars steamrolled the Roman Senate and took the empire back under authoritarian dictatorships. Now, what most people think of as patriotism goes beyond gratefulness to God and honor for those to whom honor is due. Patriotism that refuses to acknowledge the sins of the nation is to love the country rather than to love God and fear God. Patriotism that holds to the adage, my country right or wrong, is blind, misplaced allegiance. Patriotism that argues constantly of how much better this country is than others, or how much more righteous this culture is than others, is nothing less than sinful pride and sheer ignorance. Eastern nations are far less likely to endorse homosexual marriage than the US, Canada, the UK, and other Western nations. Muslims from the Middle East will correct Americans for taking God's name in vain. Americans kill more babies than Iranians and Ugandans. So which nation is better than the other? We need to be realistic and thoughtful in answering questions like these. Now on this 250th anniversary of the nation's history, America is still known as a bastion for freedom. But why? I believe it's largely because of the Bill of Rights. So this is one more thing to be thankful for this year. Even to this day, about twenty-five to thirty-five percent of Supreme Court cases involve constitutional law, and of those constitutional cases, a large portion involve the Bill of Rights. And thirty to fifty percent of all criminal appeals in U.S. courts involve at least one Bill of Rights issue. Well, James Madison in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia chose not to include an enumeration of rights for the people in their first production of the Constitution, released in September of 1787. The battle would have to play out in the Virginia Convention in June of 1788. Now, against James Madison's protest, George Mason, the author of Virginia's Bill of Rights, rose to propose a fundamental statement of rights for all Americans to be included in the U.S. Constitution. Then, of course, Patrick Henry's substitute motion on the floor requiring a Bill of Rights to ratification of the Constitution failed by a vote of 80 to 88. But then Edmund Randolph offered a slightly modified motion, which used softer language but still underscore the need for stated rights, and the motion passed. Subsequently, the ratifying convention in Virginia formed a committee to suggest a list of amendments of rights for the first meeting of the U.S. Congress. Just before the convention convened, Patrick Henry had already drafted his own list, most of which the committee incorporated into its final proposal. Massachusetts joined in with a similar request thanks to motions proposed by Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The United States Congress complied with Virginia's request for a Bill of Rights, and most of the U.S. Constitution was procedural and organizational, largely unfit for holding back tyrants and restraining the ever-expanding grasp of the federal government. But that one-page document advocated by Patrick Henry, George Mason, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, appended to the U.S. Constitution, has proved to be invaluable to the defense and maintenance of individual freedoms in this country. The U.S. Bill of Rights has protected liberty for millions, hundreds of millions of people over the course of thousands of court battles in the last two and a half centuries. These rights have protected many innocent persons, journalists, pastors, and evangelists who wish to preach the gospel. This has served as a good restraint for many power-hungry tyrants who would have persecuted innocent citizens, created a police state, and violated God's laws at the highest levels of governance in this free country, the United States of America. So today, on this 250th anniversary of this nation's founding, our subject is patriotism, gratefulness, America First, and Trumpism with Sam Rust. And joining me, Sam Rust, a board member for Generations and Christian Home Educators of Colorado, a parent organization. And Sam, welcome. It's good to have you here. And you know, today's emphasis is gratefulness and patriotism. And here's the big thing. The big thing is 2,000 years of Jesus in this world has transformed the world. And I I really want that to be the biggest takeaway that people receive from books I've written that, yeah, okay, there are some things that aren't right. But there are a lot of things that have been put right by the reign, and I mean the reign of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years, and there isn't a person on this globe who has not been blessed by the prosperity, the peace, the freedoms, the economic know-how, the technological developments, the medical improvements, you name it. There isn't a person on this globe that hasn't been affected. I remember landing in Kathmandu, Nepal, uh maybe five, six, seven years ago, my daughter Rebecca was there with me, and I said to Rebecca, I said, Jesus has been here. That's the first thing I said, Sam. I said, Jesus has been here. I just knew immediately that Jesus has affected this place as well as everywhere else. Now, obviously, you know, there are play there's the work to be done, and yet, and yet, and yet, um wow, uh, you know, Jesus has blessed the world. And and I think so much of it has been the West, and so much has been the influence of the United States of America, not just the missionary work, but think about how much the science, the political realm, the principles of liberty, the Bill of Rights has affected the whole world. So, okay, I'm gonna let you step in at this point, but there's reasons to be grateful here.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, uh one of the main reasons to be grateful for America is in our founding documents, but it's something that that maybe doesn't come to mind right away, or we don't express it this way. But fundamentally, the founders and Americans for generations have had an immense distrust of humans and human power.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

And I think that that's comes directly from a biblical understanding of who man is, it's biblical anthropology put into our founding documents. And so much of the blessings that you were listing off, Kevin, derive from that fundamental principle that humans can't be trusted with absolute power, that we're inherently sinful. And so the founders wisely took a look at that, thought we're no different than our forefathers that have come before us. We're gonna break power apart, we're gonna spread it around, we're gonna have, you know, the balance of powers, the separation of powers. Um, we're gonna eliminate the chance of a federal government, a federal religion. Um, and and they did so many things that moved the tripwires away from the center that made it hard for one person or entity to gather the threads and control an entire country. And um, that's I I think that's one of the things that just has to be mentioned first and foremost.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Well, and Patrick Henry and uh Samuel Adams, John Adams, and others had much to say about uh their distrust of humans uh with power. Uh I think it was the Englishman who said uh power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But uh the American form of government understood that and incorporated, I think I've counted seven to eight levels or different forms of balance of powers amongst branches, you know, whether that be national, state, local governments, uh legislative, uh executive/slash judicial, um, you know, the U.S. Senate, the high, the upper house versus the lower house. There were, I believe, seven or eight different forms of balance of powers that were hardwired into the American system of government that has served us so well. It's so hard for a dictator, a communist dictator to step in and say, I'm gonna kill all my enemies and I'm gonna create a tyranny out of America. That's super hard to do.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah. Yeah, it it's it's incredible. Um another thing that I would point to is just the joy, the cheerfulness, the the confidence that Americans espouse, the the typical caricature that gets built of an American by people around the world is uh you know, somebody who just is undaunted and forever cheerful. And like there is no obstacle too great. The uh the Navy construction battalion, the Seabees, their motto is the difficult we do now, the impossible takes a little longer. And I think that just like really captures the American spirit in a lot of ways. Um, I I was looking today at some construction stats um during World War II. You know, America just we pivoted, we got into the war in 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But over the course of the war, we built 141 aircraft carriers to Japan 16. You know, and there's stat after stat like that. Like when we put our minds to something as a country, we can accomplish incredible things. Think of the Manhattan Project. Think even more recently of an energy revolution. I mean, back in 2008, 2009, we thought we had hit peak oil, there was no more oil left to discover. And then the combination of private property rights and American ingenuity and innovation led to one of the greatest energy booms uh of any century in human history. It all happened in America became energy independent in 10 years. Um, stories like that are just filled uh across the centuries of the last 250 years.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

You wonder what that's due to, Sam. I mean, I I think in terms of the Christian faith itself, America has the largest Protestant population in the world, bar none, by a significant margin to this day. Um I think it's due greatly to the fact that America, Americans are hopeful, and hope can only come by the gospel, by a belief that all things will work together for good and that we will all live happily ever after. If that's the kind of story you're living, because you believe in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and is living happily ever after, in the most ultimate sense of the term. Uh, if if you have a hopeful sense, it has to have come from the gospel one way or the other. Your your take on that.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Oh, I completely agree. I mean, the until somewhat recently, and maybe in the last 20, 30 years, the vast majority, and we're talking more than 70% of Americans going back like 1980 and before, were descended from like northern European countries, primarily England. Um, yes, there were waves of immigration from the Netherlands and from Germany and some of the Norwegian countries, but Scandinavian countries. But in general, it was really concentrated in, as you pointed out, these Protestant countries that embraced a work ethic going back 400 years, coming from climates where a work ethic was required to survive. You know, there's some of those aspects that we see encoded in our DNA. Um, you know, America, it is a melting pot. There's a there's a lot of different people that have come here, but the American spirit in many ways continues on. Uh, and I think that that's that's something noteworthy that we've been able to sustain this level of innovation going back, you know, 125 years. I mean, we passed England, depending on which measure you want to look at, somewhere between 1850 and 1875, 1880 was when America passed England on GDP. Um, and we've really never looked back.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Um, China's the only one that's really even come close. And uh so much of their statistics are gamed by the the state bureaucrats over in communist China, go figure.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

So well, let's let's talk about America first. I want to kind of migrate into this. Now, okay, patriotism is a good thing. This is my view that patriotism is all right as long as we're being realistic and thoughtful and not not considering ourselves to be better than we really are. Okay, so with I think it's what is it? Uh Romans chapter 13, somewhere around verses uh 10 or 11. It speaks of being careful that you don't think of yourself too highly, uh, but to think rationally as much as God has given us these things. So so I think patriotism is okay, and I think gratefulness is the better way to see it, to to express that gratefulness for the good things and the good heritage that God has given this country.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah, I I think that we often will fall into a ditch of talking about patriotism and not think about our categories appropriately. Um, but it's it's all part of an ordered set of loves. Um and though Christ has come and like redeemed the world and re and is calling for himself a people, he also and he's forming for himself that nation. Um it's not here yet. And there's still realities. We are living in a temporal plane here and now where we're called to live out the gospel in the context in which we find ourselves in. And those contexts are families, churches, communities, states, and nations. Um, and you know, a nation exists for the good of its people. That's the biblical justification. It's to wield a sword, to ward off evil, to punish the evildoer, and to reward the righteous. Um, and I we should embrace the fact that we live in a country that by and large, you know, we're focusing on so much of the good that's happened that by and large is one of the more uh righteous nations um that the world has seen that exists in the world today. Again, massive warts and gender ideology and abortion and all those things. But as we were talking just a couple of minutes ago, encoded in our founding is correct anthropology. There's a correct understanding of who God is. Um, and that's something that we've been able to pass on, at least in a cultural context, um, in a way that has sustained our civilization and our culture to this present moment.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Okay, so MAGA. So make America great again. America first. Elements of this restricting illegal immigration, trade protectionism, skepticism towards global agreements, international organizations, etc. There's a few things here that, you know, in the sense that I don't really like internationalism. Nationalism beats internationalism. So that's that that to me is should be fairly obvious to any Christian who resists the babble impulse, right? To to create a world government without Jesus. So that's I I think obvious. But uh but what do you think of this America First movement? And you know, Trump has has pulled this together. It seems like it's gained a lot of momentum. It obviously received the majority of American support during the 2024 elections.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

I think any successful political movement, one has a good idea that it's a proponent of, and then it has a scapegoat, a red herring, or an actual opponent that it can successfully provide as a jousting opponent, right? And America first, it's a great slogan. I mean, who doesn't want to have America first if you're an American? But it comes in the context of a lot of our elite class treating it as America last. Uh, if you look at tariff rates around the world, uh going back, if we just pick you know January of 2024, on average, our goods were being tariffed at like 15 to 18 percent across the world, and our average tariff coming in was like two percent. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Yeah, there was a there was a discriminant, there was a discrepancy big time. Yeah, no question about it.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Big time discrepancy. You look at uh just our funding of NATO. We're fundamentally providing a nuclear shield and and boots on the ground for Europeans against a threat from the East, supposedly, going back to the Soviet days. Um, but we're bearing the lion's share of that. I mean, Trump has been talking for 10 years about trying to get Europeans to pay their fair share, and you know, they most of them aren't doing it still. They're not spending near what we're spending as a percent of GDP on their own defense. So we're we're exporting defense. We're um, there's so many areas where we're we're not taking care of our people, of our national interests, and and we've shipped factories overseas, we've funded China's rise, you know, all these things. And some of those are you know, chasing the dollar. There's greed, and and we're not uh we're not immune from those issues. Um, but so much of it has come from this elite class that wants to farm out these advantages in pursuit of maybe global harmony to put the best spin on it, um, but perhaps something more nefarious um and more anti-American. And so I think Trump has tapped into that because you know, there's there's always the people who what about these sorts of topics. And and we should point out we we don't worship Trump, we don't want to worship a secular ideology, but it is fundamentally acceptable, I believe, as a Christian, to embrace a love of country, a love where you live. God made us that way. Um, and so we we should embrace the aspects of the MAGA movement or America First that follow God's law. And and it just so happens that those movements follow God's law a lot closer than some of the other DEI um or ESG type movements that we've seen sweep across the world.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Right. The the immigration issue, I'd like your take on that as well. Um, there's certain aspects of immigration that has irritated the living daylights out of me. Uh the the the the fact that you know such a high percentage come into welfare, uh illegal immigration, you know, on and on and on. I mean, there there are certain aspects that are problem. Now, but I'm an immigrant as well, and I think you're an immigrant as well. You know, your your your family immigrated here at one point. Uh so there's you know elements of immigration that that I think are are issues, but uh but I have not seen it as a a massive now. I did a calculation recently and and found the percentage of immigrants slash illegal immigrants, I mean legal slash illegal immigrants that that vote Democrat versus Republican. And I was acting out the pragmatic approach and identifying, you know, that that Trump was able to I think deport something like 500,000 to a million immigrants this year. And then I calculated over four years, and if he was successful at doing that, he would knock off about a half a percent of Democrat votes for the 2028 elections. You know, so I was kind of working it out in my in my on my calculator, like, okay, how successful would he be given the Democrat to Republican vote ratio in a typical presidential election? So kind of working that out, saying, okay, that kind of makes sense to move some of these people off, uh, especially the legal immigrants. Um so I see some pragmatic reasons for it. Uh, but what's your take on it? How important is this issue of limiting immigration and um and then perhaps bringing the right immigrants in?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

I am more on the uh the aggressive end of the uh immigration spectrum. I I think that we must halt all immigration, legal and otherwise. And Trump has has done a fantastic job at closing the border to illegal immigrants. Um numbers have dropped far below even the 20-year average. Even if you throw out the last four years of Biden as an anomaly, um, our border crossings are down significantly. Way, way, way down. Approaching zero, yeah, functionally zero. Um, but any country, if it's going to survive, has to have a level of social cohesion. You have to have a culture and an identity. Um, and and there's throughout history, we study history, we can see there's a lot of different identities that come about. Um, but great empires usually fall because they lose that central identity. You think of the Romans that, you know, they first it was just the people of Italy of Rome who could serve in the army, and then it was the people around Rome that could serve, and then it was people in Italy, and then it was Cisalpine Gaul, and then then it was the Gaulites, and then it went out to the Visigoths, and then eventually the Visigoths come and overthrow Rome itself and sack it because they're not getting paid. Um, and and just they worked their way further and further away from what it meant to be a Roman until it essentially became whoever was willing to pay. And people don't have love for things that they can buy in that sense. That you're not cultivating that deep connection um to your land and to the people around you. You you are just an economic zone at that point. Um and I think unfortunately, we see a lot of those same issues in America today. I I think so many of our social issues that we care about as Christians, um, we have no shot at fixing if we don't stop illegal immigration, if we don't stop immigration, period. Um, you know, one encouraging sign, I think we've accepted maybe 15,000 political refugees um in the last 12 months. And I think all but a couple hundred of them were South African farmers, the Boers, um, who are you know much closer to our people. Uh they're Christians, they're independent, they they share our faith, they share our value systems, and they're being persecuted. Um, I would, on a very limited case-by-case basis, be willing to consider granting asylum to those sorts of people. But as we've seen in Minneapolis and really in every major city across our country, the system has been completely hijacked by our enemies. Um, we can find clips of Clinton, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, even Obama, Chuck Schumer. All of these politicians were anti-illegal immigration. It was a big campaign slogan for all of them in the 90s into the 2000s. And then something changed. Um, and and what that something is, is pretty clear. They want to bring in a voter class, and you know, the Save Act is something that's really in the news right now. Trump is trying to push that through. But Chuck Schumer has come out and said that if the Save Act gets passed, we're going to disenfranchise 20 million voters. That's a really fancy way of saying 20 million people are voting that shouldn't be voting. You know, in the context of a federal presidential election where the total vote is maybe 160 million, that's a really significant number of votes that frankly shouldn't be occurring. So uh it's immigration is a crucial issue, I believe, for our time.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

I'm still concerned that the vast majority of public educated, public school educated people in America, meaning the 90% of uh the American population doesn't really identify a unified uh cross-cultural denominator that is uh helpful. Uh we're looking at foundations destroyed across this nation. I granted, granted, the Democrats are doing everything they can to further destroy the foundations. And I I think they're using immigration to do that. They're they're wanting to create as much disturbance as possible, perhaps to you know move more to a towards an internationalism. So I can see that. I understand that agenda, the the the the the self-destructive suicidal approach to uh social systems and governments and all the rest. But uh but it's hard for me to see that the nation itself is ready to rebuild foundations, at least upon the principles on which the nation was founded, biblical principles, or even some broad-based biblical principles, like a respect for life, liberty, and property, for example. I'm not, you know, I mean, I've I've campaigned across Colorado a number of times and expressed, you know, this commitment to life, liberty, property. Typically, people don't resonate to it. They're more interested in Social Security. They're more interested in, you know, what can I get from the government? Uh I uh maybe I'm just a little too cynical on this one. But you know, my experience running for political office was that people just don't resonate to the kind of message uh that uh reflects the principles on which the nation was founded. So that's been my experience. Now, granted, there's ways in which we can revive that, rebuild foundations, and maybe we just need to take some time and rebuild the foundations of the nation. To me, that's the that's the key. That's the thing that needs to happen first.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah, I think people unfortunately need to feel pain. Um, and that pain can come in a lot of different forms, and it can come in a lot of different levels. Um, and some of it doesn't have to be felt, some of it can just be perceived or seen in other cultures. Um and we're witnessing countries across Europe, we've talked about this before, but countries across Europe are really struggling under the weight of legal and illegal immigration and accepting migrants and putting them on welfare. And and now, you know, many towns, many of the largest cities in England, for example, are are governed by Islamic mayors. Um, and and a lot of our people are looking at that um through independent media, um, which is why programs like this are so important. We to be able to disseminate what's actually going on in a broad scale way. But people are seeing that and they don't want that here. You know, the people of Texas are seeing statues to the demon gods going up that are 180 feet tall. They're seeing uh, you know, there was the the huge mosque in Oklahoma that got thwarted, thank goodness. Um, but they're seeing these things happen in their backyard. They're noticing so many of the school shootings are being perpetrated by people who are trying to trans themselves. Um, you know, those those things are being felt, they're being noticed more and more. Um, and people want to do something about now. Now I hope that it doesn't just turn into pure outrage. We have to channel in the right direction. Um, but I I think conditions are coinciding to where I think people are waking up. The question, as always, is will enough soon enough?

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Big question, and let's land on this one, uh, Sam. That is uh the heritage of the nation. How important is it to revive the heritage of a nation? Uh the people, you know, develop a love for it, educate their children in it, and uh and and and really seek to grow off of uh a good heritage, the the best of heritage, the best of the heritage that they have inherited from the previous generations. Um how important is that, do you think, in the scheme of the state?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

It's absolutely vital. And and we can say that in a lot of different ways. Um, historically, we know that's vital. Uh, but what did God do when he went about setting up a nation? Um, we're we're preaching through Exodus in the church we attend right now and and examining what God did in raising up Moses and then calling out the people of Israel. But then what are the commands that he gives them? Fundamentally, it's about passing on the heritage that God has given them in his law and in the miracles that he wrought in the desert and in the land of Egypt from one generation to the next. Um, and and that builds uh uh the design that God had, and that was to create a special people for himself that would remember the Lord as God, remember the works that he had done for their forefathers, which implies a respect for their forefathers, by the way. That was all encoded into God's design for his people. We as Christians are his people now, um, and we should we should worship God, be thankful for the heritage that he's given us, and call back to, as you said, the good parts of that. And there are so many good parts. So many of the founders were Christian. So much of our founding documents come from biblical principles, from the Ten Commandments, from correct anthropology. Um, it's in going back that we can move forward.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Well, and Psalm 78 comes to mind that yeah, if you do not remember the mighty works of God, if you cannot remember the history or relate it to your children, you'll probably turn back in the day of battle as the uh sons of Ephraim did. So, yeah, this is a Psalm 78 moment in the history of this country. And I hope that uh I hope people take uh uh constant attention to this, especially those families that listen to this program. And that's that's why I'd recommend American God's Providence, the story of freedom, where we go through the 800-year uh story from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence uh and the war for our independence from England. Um recommend those resources uh to families. Read read read a lot of it out loud. I just love to read out read the stories out loud to my kids. And um and sometimes you wind up crying over it as well. I mean it's very emotional, it's very powerful, and and then you you get a strong sense of of the fact that you have taken this, uh you received this heritage and you have an obligation to pass this uh on to the following generations and to grow off of it. So I hope that that's uh that's what people receive uh this 250th year anniversary since the founding of the nation, uh 1776. This is the year 2026. It's 250 years since that great heritage was handed off to us uh so many years ago. Sam Rust, my guest and my co-host on this edition of the program. Thank you, Sam. Good stuff today, and uh we appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Yeah, thank you, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Folks, you have been listening to the Generations Broadcast, encourage you again to our resources. American God's Providence, also American faith. 27 great vignettes of the greatest American Christians that made a huge impact on this nation's history, as well as the story of freedom. Those are some good resources that could be helpful for your family as you celebrate the 250th anniversary of this country. And this is Kevin Swanson and Sam Rust inviting you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org/slash media.