Almost a Saturday on Substack

(And yet again, I fell asleep whilst typing!)

Hello there again! Yes, it’s me again, writing again at a time where people generally are doing other things. That’s fine.

The past couple of weeks have been crazy to the point where I’m still reading Rod Dreher, and kind of mindlessly going through news, but I’m spending more time playing a silly game where I don’t have to think much as opposed to reading things to think about. The same kind of pattern has kind of spilled into listening to podcasts; for the most part, I’m not looking for anything really deep, but something to listen to whilst walking, doing dishes, or folding clothes is great.

Tucker Carlson has had some interesting material sometimes, and I’ve been interested in how he seems to be undergoing some sort of deepening of faith over the last couple of years. In the past, he’s kind of joked that he doesn’t know much of anything being an Episcopalian, and while I’m not looking to him for theology, there have definitely been interesting things he’s brought up in regard to Christianity. In any case, when I saw a new video show up for me on YouTube of Tucker interviewing a country musician with a hit song about Revelation, I was kind of interested, so I started listening. First off, though, the song:

I can’t say that there’s anything super-objectionable in the song. Not my cup of tea, but not horrible either.

Here’s the interview with Tucker:

Oh boy. *sigh* First off, let this be a reminder that we shouldn’t be getting our theology from popular music people or political pundits. There’s so much here that is mostly right, but then just a little bit off. In discussing details of “the Rapture”, Rich says things like “90% of Christians believe such-and-such”. One of these assertations was in regard to whether Christians will be “taken up” before the start of the tribulations or not. His percentage is absolutely wild, though, because I don’t think you could get 90% of Protestants to say they believed this, but if you throw in Catholics (and us crazy Orthodox), all of whom run the spectrum from believing that “the Rapture” will happen to not, the percentage would be nowhere near 90%.

I grew up in the non-denominational Protestant world. Much of what Rich was talking about reminded me of that, but also rubbed me the wrong way and reminded me why I left. Tucker (sorry, using his first name) seems entranced by it, the street preaching, the talking about the end times, etc., because he didn’t know people like this for most of his life. I have no beef with people who take Christianity seriously and who, like Rich’s father, are brave in trying to spread the Gospel. What really bothered me, though - and this is what I grew up with - is the idea that if one just reads the Bible, one will come to know the Truth.

This is a weird notion, I know, but it strikes at two things that I now believe to be false. First off, I generally believe that reading the Bible is a good thing, and I think that an awful lot of regular people read it and it profoundly changes their lives - and mostly for the good. However, the two things that bother me are as follows: with the “just read your Bible” crowd, it seems as though the Bible is something that anyone can simply understand by reading it. While plenty of it is plain, this kind of throws away the wisdom and experience we have of 1700 or so years of people thinking and writing about it. Why would somebody need that, when one’s own take is apparently just as good? The second thing that irks me is the idea that if something is unclear or simply hard to understand, the fault must lie with the reader, not with the fact that a lot of the Bible, especially at first blush, is unclear and hard to understand. It also kind of absolves others from having a deeper conversation about a lot of this. Someone read the Bible and not want to become a Christian? It must be because that person didn’t understand something that was plainly there! The Bible is a holy book, yes, but it’s not a magical item. Reading it doesn’t automatically make the reader Christian, and the reader isn’t defective when that doesn’t happen. But especially among the non-denominational Christians, there’s the idea that church really isn’t all that important, and unfortunately, this line of thinking has really spread throughout a lot of the Protestant world. (How quaint it is to read L.M. Montgomery and read about kids arguing about whether the Methodists were going to hell because they weren’t Presbyterians!)

AI prompt: reading a Bible in Japan

Rich also had some weird ideas about free will and what God has foreordained. Mind you, that’s a tough theological issue to tackle in the first place, and not being trained in theology, I don’t necessarily think he got the balance describing this right. I also think he kind of botched parts of the “bad things” God sends; in short, while his song may be good, there’s a reason why we’re generally not supposed to be getting our theology from singers!

I do find it a good thing that Tucker is taking his faith more seriously. He’s made comments before razzing the Episcopalian church, to which he belongs. In this interview, he says they’re a “fake church” and… well, they’ve very much fallen away from what they once believed. I just hope that he’s careful on which way he goes on this journey because even if he’s never a religious teacher - and I hope he never is - his is a powerful witness, and I’d hate to see him get disillusioned before finding a good church to feel at home with.