Q: "Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?"
Pastor Josh's answer is worth your time... 🙏
🚨 The @ShawnRyan762 x @howertonjosh episode is out now: https://t.co/hcRFYprw29
“He’s five months old. He doesn’t understand English.”
Right.
The baby understands something deeper.
Why is it that “mama” (or some version of it) shows up in nearly every language on earth? Chinese, Arabic, Spanish. Cultures separated by continents, histories, and entirely different linguistic families — and yet they all landed on the same sound for the same person?
That’s not coincidence. That’s anthropology.
“Ma” is one of the very first sounds a baby can make. It’s the natural position of the mouth during nursing. Long before a child understands words, he forms that sound. And who answers?
Across time, across cultures, across civilizations it is the woman who carried him, the woman whose body he knows.
Humanity didn’t invent “mama.” We recognized it.
So no, he doesn’t understand English.
But he does understand that something (or someone) is missing.
And what makes that video so disturbing isn’t just the cruelty of laughing at a distressed baby. It’s the denial of the human non-negotiable that children come from, and are made for, a mother.
They can mock the baby's babbling. But the can't erase the reality it points to.
That baby isn’t confused. The gay men are.
James Talarico (@jamestalarico) is a Texas state rep who is running for the Democrat nomination for the US Senate against another intellectual giant, Jasmine Crockett, in a pathetic race for who has the greatest diminished capacity and most extreme leftist agenda.
Although (perhaps better: because) he is also a seminary student at the hard-left Austin Presbyterian Seminary, he makes some of the worst and most laughable arguments I have ever heard. Scripture (or Jesus) has become a mere cipher into which he imputes his hard-left ideology.
Of course biblical writers don't talk about "gay marriage" (!), just as they don't talk about incestuous marriage, for the obvious reason that same-sex intercourse and incest are prohibited as extreme sexual sins abhorrent to God. Only a daft and utterly clueless person could possibly use this as an argument for claiming that same-sex "marriage" would be of little concern (much less something good) in the mind of any biblical writer (and Jesus).
Talarico's idea of determining the significance of sexual issues by counting up the number of references is juvenile hermeneutics (for example, compare the paucity of condemnations of bestiality). Some sexual offenses are so extreme that the very mention of them is viewed as scandalizing. How many times have you heard a sermon about why you shouldn't have sex with your parent, sibling, or child? I'm guessing never, but not because your pastor regards such behavior as acceptable or only marginally bad.
As for abortion, Scripture is clear that humans are made in God's image and that already in the womb God is at work shaping the young child. It is not surprising that all treatment of abortion in the early church rejects abortion utterly.
Talarico's assertion in a prior interview that God gave Mary the option in Luke 2 of aborting the Son of God conceived in her womb is so monumentally absurd and blasphemous that it qualifies (along with his "gay marriage" claim) for the oft-quoted lines in the movie Billy Madison: "What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard.... Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
By the way, there is no scripture promoting illegal immigration, open borders, and massive welfare states but that doesn't stop Talarico from insisting on these as "biblical." Moreover, his proof-texting of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goat in Matthew 25 for these purposes is a false reading of the passage, which is about the nations being judged on the basis of their reception of Christian missionaries, as the the Mission Discourse in Matthew 10 indicates (https://t.co/cuxBrUV1pm). With the Great Commission in view, the idea that Matthew thought that people would be judged first and foremost on the basis of how much of a social justice warrior they were is ludicrous.
The second greatest commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself" in Leviticus 19:18 includes in the context (19:17) a command to reprove your neighbor for wrongdoing lest you incur guilt for failing to warn him. That's part of what love means (or as Paul states in praise of love in 1 Corinthians 13, "love does not rejoice in wrongdoing"). Talarico is using this commandment to promote the very things--the degradation of homosexual practice and the taking of innocent human life in the womb made in God's image--that both the author of this commandment and Jesus who appealed to it abhorred.
As a seminary professor for over 3 decades I can say that giving him a D for his exegesis and application of Scripture would be due to grade inflation.
This man is an intellectually vacuous heretic. But enough of my high praise for him.
I wrote about Talarico's abortion comments last summer for WORLD Opinions after his interview with Rogan. Here's what I said:
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Rogan asks Talarico, “What do you think is the Biblical evidence to support the opinion of being pro-abortion?” Talarico responds by claiming that Scripture itself supports the right of a mother to kill her unborn child. Why? Because, he says, the Bible doesn’t treat the unborn person as a human being until—like Adam—a baby takes his first breath (Genesis 2:7). In this telling, a baby can be killed for any reason or no reason at all before he takes his first breath.
On this logic, when John the Baptist was in utero and leapt in the womb of his mother Elizabeth at the sound of pregnant Mary’s voice (Luke 1:41), Mary and Elizabeth would have been completely within their rights as women to kill both John and Jesus. After all, the boys weren’t real people yet. Likewise, King David’s mother might have chosen to abort the future king even as God was “weaving” him together in his mother’s womb and ensuring that he was fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-14).
Talarico also claims that God asked for Mary’s “consent” before conceiving the incarnation in her womb. In other words, God asked for her permission. Again, that is not at all what the Bible says. Yes, Mary gave her joyful consent. No, God did not ask permission. Go read the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke. You will not find God asking Mary’s permission to do anything. He simply announces what He is about to do through his sovereign will and power.
Talarico is wrongly inserting modern notions of consent into the text of Scripture in an attempt to justify abortion. His logic goes like this: Mary gave God her permission to carry the Son of God in her womb. Therefore, modern pregnancies can only proceed if the woman gives her consent/permission. Without her permission, there is no moral obligation for her to continue her pregnancy. She can have an abortion if she wants one because her consent alone determines her moral obligations. It’s a pro-choice “bodily autonomy” argument speciously imposed upon the text of Scripture.
Yes, Mary gave her consent to God’s announcement. But if she hadn’t, she would have been sinning! Likewise, pregnant mothers most often give their consent to maintaining their pregnancy. But when they don’t, they would also be sinning to kill the child within them. Why? Because once a child is conceived, mothers have a moral obligation to care for that child. They have a moral obligation to the command, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).
Talarico’s manipulation of Scripture reveals that he is not qualified to hold office, much less to be a pastor. His star may be rising as a politician, but he needs to be seen for what he is. Anyone who cannot grasp the basic goods of life, marriage, and family is in no position to craft policy for the public good. If Talarico’s vision for life, marriage, and family were enacted, it would bring misery to countless Americans—and death to the unborn. Those destructive consequences are not mitigated by the affability of the messenger, and voters need to be clear-eyed about what is at stake.
[There's a link to the full article in the thread below.]
@WNGdotorg
If someone asks you “Do you believe your religion is more true than other religions?”, and your answer isn’t a definitive “yes” then your professed religion isn’t your actual religion.
For instance, Mr. Talarico would have no trouble declaring anti-racism more true than racism, liberalism more true than post-liberalism, egalitarianism more true than authoritarianism.
Therefore these things are Mr. Talarico’s real religion.
🚨 JUST IN - MICHAEL KNOWLES: "Erika Kirk forgave her husband's killer. The state of Utah will inject poison into that killer's veins until he's DEAD."
"There is no contradiction between those two things. Christian forgiveness does not demand that we allow the cruel to ravage the whole earth. It demands we love our enemies - and sometimes, love is tough." - @michaeljknowles at TPUSA tonight
“There’s only two things you can get in the afterlife … you can get justice or you can get grace.”
Dr. Frank Turek just preached the gospel to millions of people. Pray for mass conversions.
On September 10th, one man shot Charlie Kirk and the left cheered.
And on September 21st, one woman forgave that shooter and the right applauded.
Satan on one side, God on the other.
Know where you stand.
Because Satan owns the fence.
When George Floyd died, BLM organized riots nationwide that killed 25-40 people, injured 900 cops & caused $2 billion in damages
When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, people organized prayer vigils & millions of dollars were raised for his wife & 2 children
We are not the same
Erika Kirk (and supporters) had to memorialize Charlie from behind bulletproof glass.
Liberals have the luxury of cheering for Charlie’s death in the streets, safe and unafraid.
Never forget that contrast.
This is the reason why progressive “Christians” are denying that Charlie Kirk is a martyr for Christ:
People who do not know what it looks like to live for Christ also do not know what it looks like to die for Christ.
Charlie Kirk’s assassin Tyler Robinson, 22, killed him because he hated his opinions and thought he was a fascist. Yet ironically, HE was the fascist, killing someone to silence their opposing views.
The woke left love to say ‘speech is violent.’
It’s not - violence is.
The “I don’t agree with him but no one deserves to be shot and killed” take is such a low bar in basic human empathy
Better to say nothing at all than to denigrate Charlie’s life’s work and signal moral superiority while you make sure people know you don’t condone murder
Political violence is a feature, not a bug of progressivism.
Because progressivism is built on top of a Critical Theory lens that sees the world through "Oppressed vs Oppressor" categories rather than a Christian Theology lens of "Right vs Wrong", it trains people to see opponents not as mistaken, but as evil oppressors.
If you believe someone is mistaken, you try to persuade them (what @charliekirk11 did).
If you believe someone is an evil oppressor ("literally Hitler!", "fascist", "existential threat to democracy", virtually everything and everyone is "racist"), you will feel a moral obligation to stop them.
This is why there is radically disproportionate violence emerging on the Left.