What Makes a Nation Christian? | Ep. 50
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jeremy_1_06-25-2025_135300: [00:00:00] It is time for us to get political today.
That's right. This is gonna be a very special political episode of Cabernet and pray. Some of you are going to love this. Some of you may not.
Some of you may be a bit uncomfortable with how I'm going to share things today. Either way, wine makes it better, and so I've got my glass here.
Hopefully you are able to join me in drinking something great. That is definitely gonna take the edge off and help us get into what we're gonna get in today. Now, in addition to going into the deep end of the pool, we are celebrating the 50th episode of Cabernet and Pray. I am amazed. I. That we got to 50.
This is awesome. It has taken a while and this has been a lot of work and I have been surprised how much I've enjoyed this. I've enjoyed these conversations. I have enjoyed having a [00:01:00] place a platform to expand on my thinking on. Conversations that need to be had that often, there's not a great place to have them elsewhere.
And so this has been that environment as we're gonna see today is a great place to have some conversations that are deeply needed but often don't fit in. Elsewhere. In addition, I have loved meeting the guests that I've had a chance to meet and having those conversations. And I have learned a ton by just hosting this podcast, these 50 episodes.
Hopefully you have learned something. Hopefully you've been encouraged by it. And I know a number of you have reached out throughout the time that I've been doing this and have shared different things, and I so appreciate that. And so for those of you who have been around, especially those of you.
For a while. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing this and being a part of this, and I do always wanna say, as we celebrate our 50th episode today, would you [00:02:00] find maybe one of your favorite episodes and pass it on to someone else? Let's get the word out. I would love for more people I.
To be exposed to these conversations and this environment. And so maybe pick an episode that you love, maybe pick today if you like where this one goes and pass it on to someone else and just say, Hey, why don't you check this out? And I would be super thankful for that and I would love to have your support in that way.
If you are up for it. So that's my ask as we celebrate our 50th episode. So without further ado, welcome to episode 50. What makes a nation Christian? I.
I have never shared this with anybody publicly. There's so many things happen in this conversation right now, thousand years from now, people are gonna be looking at this podcast saying, so this was the breakthrough. If this was SportsCenter, that would be like such a hot take. Skip Bales would've no idea.
Stephen A. Smith would've no idea what to say. You drop that down. That is so good. The joke I always say is like, how'd you learn so much? You gotta drink a lot. [00:03:00] The power of food and beverage to lubricate an environment, resistance to change is hurting the church. I'm not in the camp that God has a penis or a vagina or a body at all.
I mean, the camp to God is at Universal spirit. This is the strangest podcast that I've been on. I don't even know what to do. I'm kind of geeked up about this wine. So this is my second glass and it delivers a little more of a punch than I expected. So if I get a little loopy, it's your fault. You tell me to drink and I just show up.
I'll also say as a confession, I am a lightweight, so I've had like three sips of this wine and I'm already feeling it, so this is fun. You've uncovered the mystery, you've exposed the formula. You've just duct taped together a number of things that aren't normally hanging out together, and I'm here for it.
We're gonna sit down a table, we're gonna have a glass of wine and some food, and we're gonna talk about the beauty of Jesus. Thank you for the, the hospitality that this particular podcast. Provides folks like myself and I know [00:04:00] others to, to be curious around their faith practices. I really appreciate this venue, what you're doing.
It is fun, and yet you dig into the deep stuff. I've heard about your podcast for a long time, and I love that you're a pastor and that you explore the world of faith through wine that's very unique. I will never forget the first time I bought a bottle of wine. By myself, which was yesterday. If you're familiar with Drunk History, I thought it's like drunk theology, so I, oh, I got a little spicy there.
It's the peach wine early. The wine is, here we are. Here we are. Beer, we are, no, it's wine. Jeremy. By the way, drinking this Pinot Grigio at three o'clock in the afternoon is making me even more direct in my communication than I normally would be. I know why you have your guest drink wine. Makes sense now.
Yeah, I get it. A little bit of liquid courage. You really unleash the beast. I think you've got a good podcast throwing the wine bit in there. That's nice, doesn't it? Cabernet and Prey. [00:05:00] Yeah.
jeremy_1_06-25-2025_135300: I am going to begin our conversation today talking about what I'm drinking, and hopefully you are able to join me in something. I've got a 2023 Blalock and Moore Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough New Zealand, which is the global capital for Souvignon Blanc. You can smell this wine before it even hits your lips.
I mean, this thing is so big, so aromatic. Now, New Zealand souvenir blancs are known. For being louder than their French cousins. So you can find other sauvignon blancs if you ever see a sanair that is elegant and subtle, those from Marlboro are more vibrant, more extroverted, if you will. It's kind of like thinking of Jesus flipping the tables versus Jesus writing in the dust.
You know, one is subtle, one is not. This is definitely the less subtle of the options, but a loud wine felt appropriate. For what we're [00:06:00] gonna get into today, and this one is just beautiful. I love a sauvignon blanc. You can get the acidity, especially these New Zealand ones right on the nose. You can almost feel it in your nose.
Definitely feel it on the palette. Once you take that first sip. This is a really light, pale color on a hot Arizona afternoon. This thing is beautiful. It's gorgeous. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'm getting lime zest green, apple cut grass, and some minerality on the finish, which you think of like a wet stone or some flint.
And this thing is absolutely beautiful, so it's definitely, I'm enjoying this. Hopefully you have something you get to enjoy as well, and so cheers to you and cheers to a political episode and cheers to episode 50. So a lot of things to cheers about today.
Ooh, it just makes my mouth water as I'm enjoying that. So let's get into this [00:07:00] thing. Is the United States a Christian nation? Lot of different views on this one. Lot of opinions on this one. If you were to go church by church in America today and ask people what the answer was, most of them I would suspect would say, yeah.
Of course, you know, we were founded as a Christian nation. We were started as a Christian nation. Maybe some would say we need to get back to being a Christian nation, or, you know, we've lost a little bit of what we used to have. There's this underlying belief certainly amongst, I would say, the majority of Christians in America that either we were at one point or we are a Christian nation.
Now I want you to consider a quote from Greg Boyd. This comes from his book, myth of a Christian Nation that's gonna challenge this notion a little bit. This is how Greg says it. When the kingdom of God is manifested, it's obvious it looks like Jesus, [00:08:00] but America as a nation has clearly never looked.
Remotely like Jesus. There was nothing distinctively Christ-like about the way America was discovered, conquered, or governed in the early years. To the contrary, the way this nation was discovered, conquered, and governed was he rather typical, barbaric, violent kingdom of the world affair. The immoral barbarism displayed in the early and subsequent years of this country was.
Sadly, pretty typical by Kingdom of the World standards. The fact that it was largely done under the banner of Christ doesn't make it more Christian any more than any other bloody conquest done in Jesus' name throughout history, such as the Crusades and the Inquisition qualifies them as Christ-like. So Greg Boyd and many others, and myself as well, would challenge the notion.
That [00:09:00] America is a Christian nation or that we ever have been. In fact, you have to gloss over a ton of American history to even make a plausible argument at this. And if you are willing to acknowledge our history, I just don't think there's any way I. You can make that argument, but maybe you disagree.
And so to know how we answer this, we've gotta figure out what makes a Christian nation, how do we even know if the nation we're living in is Christian? What criteria would we use? Is there even such a criteria? Does it exist? Well, friends have got good news for you because Jesus told us how to think about this.
Jesus told us how he judges nations. So we have a little litmus test, if you will, to figure out. How do we know if our country passes this test? Well, we can look at the words of Jesus and then unpack them for ourselves and figure out how we line up. So I wanna read to you, this is [00:10:00] Matthew chapter 25, and I wanna read a section.
This is verses 31 through 46. So if you wanna pause this right now, you wanna go grab your Bible, read along. That would be awesome. Or you can listen in as I read, hopefully a passage you've heard before, probably a passage we don't talk about enough. And I think right now this passage has been frequently on my mind, and I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately, as will be evident as we go on.
So Matthew 25, verse 31. Jesus says this. But when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.
And the king will say to those on his right, [00:11:00] come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation. Of the world for I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked and you gave me clothing.
I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison and you visited me, and the righteous ones will reply, Lord, when did we ever see you hungry? Feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink or a stranger and show you hospitality or naked and give you clothing. When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?
They're confused. We haven't seen this. We never saw you in any of these situations. The king will say, I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me. Then the king will turn to those on the left and say, away [00:12:00] with you, you cursed ones into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.
For I was hungry and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn't give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn't invite me into your home. I was naked and you didn't give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn't visit me. Then they will reply, Lord, when did we ever see you hungry? Or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not help you.
Notice they have the exact same response as the first group. We never saw you in any of these roles. Verse 45, and he will answer. I tell you the truth, when you refuse to help the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.
Now, I wanna point out here that this passage is about Jesus judging [00:13:00] nations, not individuals. We often read this very differently as Americans 'cause we like to internalize everything, make it personal, make it about us, and Jesus. But the setup to this, it's in the verses we just read, verse 32, all the nations will be gathered in his presence.
These are nations being represented in front of Jesus. So literally, you can picture the United States standing before Jesus as a nation, and Jesus is looking at the nation and judging it. You can imagine other nations standing there. You got Canada, Mexico, Israel, Iran, Russia, every other country is there, and Jesus is judging each of these countries based on these criteria.
Now we spend a lot of time focusing on our private souls, but we don't spend a lot of time talking about nations being judged as a whole, as an [00:14:00] entire group, as an entity. And so that's what we're gonna explore a little bit. Today. Now specifically, Jesus says there are four kinds of people that Jesus is looking at in how a nation treats people, how it treats the people who live within that nation.
And if you wanna know where I'm getting these are verses 35 and 36 that we just looked at. And so we can break these down into four groups, and then I'll just give a name for each of the four groups. In verse 35 for I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was naked and you gave me clothing.
What do we think of this group as? This would be the poor people who don't have food, they don't have anything to drink, they don't have clothes to wear, right? People without basic necessities. So just saying hey, the first group is how you treat the poor. Then he says, I was a stranger and you invited me into your home.
For a nation, I would say this is how we think of [00:15:00] immigrants. How people who aren't part of us, the strangers that come in to our country, how do we treat them when they don't have a home here? How are we treating them? That's a second group. Third would be, I was sick and you cared for me. That one's pretty self-explanatory.
How do we treat people who are sick in our country? And then fourth, I was in prison and you visited me. So the prisoner, how do we treat those who are incarcerated according to Jesus? This is what a Christian nation would look like. People who respond to Jesus as represented by these four groups of people.
Now notice what isn't on this list that we may expect, or maybe you were surprised not to see. There's no mention of how many Christians are in positions of power. Or influence how many laws we create to enforce our beliefs, whether or [00:16:00] not gay marriage is legal, whether or not abortion is legal, whether we have the 10 commandments hung and displayed in public schools, whether we avoid public schools, basically Jesus omits.
Many of the things we often assume are important. For a Christian nation and doesn't include those, and then puts in a whole bunch of things that today may garner a label such as woke, you know, and go, these are the things that I am looking at. I want you to imagine if Jesus were to give a grade to the United States on how we treat the poor, the immigrants, the sick, and the prisoners, what grade would we get?
Not you as an individual, not your community, not your church, as a nation, as a culture, what grade would we collectively get for how we treat these [00:17:00] four people? I. Now as we explore the answer to that, I wanna highlight some recent events and point out some things that maybe you're aware of, maybe you're not aware of.
And this is gonna help us answer possibly how Jesus might view the United States. Today. Now, this is by no means an exhaustive list of details that I'm gonna give You could find plenty more of these. And if you want to go through this episode in a community, in a life group, in some sort of group setting, this would be a great one for you to add other details, add other current events that would, you know, add to these four different groups and what we're talking about today.
And you could have a whole bunch of extra conversations. As well. So let's look at these four groups.
We'll begin with, how is the United States treating the poor? Well, this one is coming up a lot lately in the [00:18:00] news. According to financial expert, Ramee Seti, the recent Republican bill will cost the poorest Americans $1,600 every year. While giving rich households a massive tax cut he says that in 10 years, 81% of the benefits go to the top 10% of people, and the bottom 40% will pay more.
13 states recently turned down tens of millions of dollars of federal funding for poor children to get free lunches. There's a Republican senator Brian Lenny who said this, it's peak nanny state. It kills self-reliance and turns families into beggars. What's he referring to? Helping poor children eat lunch.
That is peak nanny state, according to some of our representatives. President Trump has recently [00:19:00] championed a bill calling for cutting $295 billion in federal spending over the next decade. This would be cut from snap, which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or basically food stamps.
We are literally making it harder for poor people to have access to food, and this is a controversial subject in our culture right now to suggest otherwise to argue that we should take care of people who are poor. Instead, what we're functionally doing is creating tax cuts for those who are wealthy and making that gap even wider.
How are the United States treating immigrants? How are we doing in this regard? President Trump has repeatedly said that undocumented immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. [00:20:00] He has said this on numerous occasions, and if you are familiar, this language echoes the rhetoric of white supremacists in particular of Adolf Hitler.
This implies the existence of a more pure bloodline that we have to preserve at the expense of inferior people is the way this logic works. On June 23rd, 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the government to continue sending migrants to third countries instead of their home nations lifting a previous court ordered suspension.
So we can now send people to countries they aren't from, and we can make this legal. So these deportations involve sending migrants, including those from Cuba, Mexico, Laos, and Vietnam to politically unstable countries like South Sudan, Libya, and El Salvador countries that they're not from. But we are now sending them there because [00:21:00] it's not our problem.
Anymore ICE is illegally detaining legal immigrants. In fact, this is why many people around the country are protesting all sorts of things that ICE are doing. I read recently that only one third of people in ICE jails have any criminal conviction. Not to mention the fear that unnamed, unmarked random masked men who are abducting people.
What that fear creates in our culture. That how far we have come from any sense of a just law and order to now. These people can get away with just about anything and we aren't able to hold them accountable. In addition, a recent report revealed that ICE has deported dozens of US citizens. That's right.
Dozens of US citizens have been. Falsely deported under this broad sweep of what [00:22:00] ICE is currently carrying out when it comes to immigration. How is the United States treating the sick? Well, the United States is the only developed country that does not have a system of universal healthcare to some degree.
And I remember when I resigned from being a lead pastor, it illuminated to me. The absurdity of tying healthcare to one's job. And I confess I'd never seen it before 'cause it hadn't ever affected me like that. But when you don't have a built-in healthcare system with your job, suddenly you see the absurdity of our system that you should have healthcare because you're alive.
Because you exist because you are a human, but rather we tie it to some sense of merit or your career or a job, and we've just gotten used to this, so we think it's normal. I've lost count of how many memes and videos I've seen recently of the [00:23:00] US military bombing Iran with some reference to them about to find out why the US doesn't have free healthcare.
And this is said as if we know we've traded one for the other. Hey, rather than us actually taking care of six people, sick people, we have a huge military and now we boast of that as we use that military on other countries and seem to be fine with that trade off. Like, yeah, we don't have any way to take care of our sick, but look at all these bombs.
That we can drop. The big beautiful bill would cut nearly $800 billion from Medicaid. It would eliminate a CA premium tax credits, and it would strip protections from millions of people. Now, I didn't know what category to put this in, but I'll throw it in this one. President Trump recently ended funding for the L-G-B-T-Q Youth Option on the National Suicide Hotline.
James Black, who's the CEO [00:24:00] of the Trevor Project, who helps to run the L-G-B-T-Q option, said this quote, the administration's decision to remove a bipartisan evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible. These people who are vulnerable, who are not doing well, and now we've just removed that resource from them.
Finally, how is the United States treating the prisoner? Well, the US makes up roughly 5% of the world's population. It holds over 20% of the global prison population. So put that in perspective of how fond we are of our prison system. The US makes up 5% of the world's population and holds over 20%. Of the global prison population since 1970, [00:25:00] our incarcerated population has increased by 500%.
There are 2 million people in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth. And even crime. One out of every three black boys today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. Ask Can one out of every six Latino boys compared to one out of every 17 white boys. So we see that these are harshly skewed towards certain groups of people.
In particular. At the same time, women are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States. I. So unless you're a white male, this is going to disproportionately affect you. Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every 10 days. Every 10 days. Brian Stevenson has pointed out that the [00:26:00] privatization of prison, healthcare, prison commerce, and a range of services has made mass incarceration a money-making windfall for a few.
And a costly nightmare for the rest of us. Frank, a Thomas made the following observation. He said, it is interesting that prison stocks went up significantly after the election of Trump. Investors understood that based upon Trump's campaign rhetoric of law and order and stop and frisk, that the prison population of especially black and brown people would go up.
And under the current administration, the federal death penalty is not just resumed, it is being expanded. So with all of that, we are left to wonder, okay, this is in real time some facts, some states of the union of how we're actually doing in these different [00:27:00] areas. Now, one of the underlying themes of how the US operates in each of these four areas.
Is our history of racism that is obviously strongly influenced by each of these four. David Gushy, who I've had on the podcast previously said this, the United States may offer the most pronounced example of a nation that has never been able to overcome its founding racism, and thus has never realized its democratic principles and aspirations.
That is such a profound line that perhaps we have never been able to overcome our founding racism. We are seeing a resurgence of this racism today, and sadly, this is especially true even in Christian circles, even in the church, which is why we need to talk more [00:28:00] about this. So catch your breath, take a break.
That's a lot to process. So what grade would you give the United States based on these four criteria based on how we treat these four groups of people? Now, I'll just confess to you, I could not give a passing grade on any of the four I there. There is no way I could justify in light of what I know.
That we would be able to pass Jesus' test on any of these four groups. And so I would say we're, we are O for four. This is a pass fail. We are o for four. We have not passed and how we've treated any of these groups. Now the solutions to each of these are complex and there could be much conversation about how do you solve for each of these areas?
How do we do a better job? That's a very nuanced conversation, one that we [00:29:00] should have, but we're never even going to have that conversation unless we begin by acknowledging that we're not doing a good job, that these four groups of people are not a priority to us, and until they are and until we shift something, we are going to fail Jesus' test for how he sees nations.
Now some of you may be feeling a bit defensive right about now. This whole conversation might feel very unpatriotic. You might feel like I've gone off the deep end and this is the final straw, but I want you to consider this. If you are a Christian. If you are following Jesus, your identity, your allegiance to Jesus comes first, comes before any other identity.
So what you should do as a Christian is to say, okay, I'm going to follow the literal words of Jesus. I'm gonna take those first, then filter those in to [00:30:00] how I figure out how to be the best type of citizen. Of the country in which I happen to live. So your identity as a Christian supersedes by a lot your identity as an American, which means we should take a passage like Matthew 25, where Jesus lays out these four groups of people that, that we can identify Jesus in and we should go, okay, that's what, if we are patriotic, if we love our nation, that's the kind of nation we should build.
A nation that takes care of these four groups of people because we are Christians and we believe that Jesus has called us to disproportionately serve these groups of people. 'cause these groups of people are particularly vulnerable. And the best thing we could do as Christians living in this country would be to rally around these principles and say, how do we.
Begin to serve broadly and in local context, [00:31:00] each of these four groups of people. And how do we increase the conversation around it? We should want to create a country that meets the criteria that Jesus lays out in Matthew 25. Now, I wanna close with something that Caleb Campbell has written, again, another guest on this podcast before, and I think this puts the whole thing in perspective.
He says, in practice we can often tell when God's words are being twisted by observing whether the hearers are experiencing peace, union with God and unity with each other, or if they are marked by outrage, anxiety, and divisiveness. To which I just ask you this, when you look at our country right now, when you look at the leadership and the things that are getting passed and the way the language is being used, do we see outrage, anxiety, and divisiveness?[00:32:00]
That's what I see. That is what is on my news each and every day, and so that is not indicative of what Jesus is talking about. Instead, we should be the ones. To work for experiencing peace and union with God and unity with each other, and it comes from a disproportionate focus on these four groups of people that Jesus lays out in Matthew 25.
So what grade do you give America? Is it a pass and fail grade? Is it a letter grade? How do you see us responding to those four groups of people that Jesus lays out? I. In Matthew 25, and if you're not okay with the answer to that, how can we as Christians living in this country work to make these groups of people better taken care of?
Can we elevate them, highlight them, speak out for them, and speak up against [00:33:00] anyone who would threaten them or harm them or put them more at odds with the culture that we live in? I'll see you on the next episode of Cabernet and Pray.
