Why the Iran War Reveals the Truth About Our World | Christian Analysis
Nathan (00:01.265)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:04.342)
And I'm your co-host Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:06.503)
Today we're going to talk about the war in Iran, the role that it serves in reminding us that the world is not as we would like it to be. And then the process of growing up to learn how to live in the world that is other than we would like it to be. So Cameron, when I, you start watching, you know, a lot has happened since you and I talked last, you and I have traveled to different places, massive things all over the news cycle, particularly around the middle East and
Cameron (00:27.406)
Yeah.
Nathan (00:36.165)
then you watch the immediate...
blame game and all the talking heads and you look at that and you're like, nobody actually knows what's going to happen here. I mean, there's some interesting insightful theories and studied and learned people, but at the end of the day, the combination of the factors and variables at play, who knows? But it unsettles us. The reason that everybody is doing that is because we're craving an explanation and we're craving a, wait, wait, this isn't normal, something's wrong.
We're looking for the expert to tell us what's the real motivation. it's about oil. It's about the economy. It's about covering up for Epstein. It's about radical Islam. It's about, and there might be parts of all of that that's true. But I think our hunger and our desire for, we must find a quick explanation is because we're assuming, wait a second, this isn't normal. This is wrong. And if I can put together a narrative in my head that helps me make sense of how we got to this, then I would be able to sleep at night.
Cameron (01:12.194)
Thank
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (01:37.699)
And what Cameron and I want to suggest to you as you're listening to this is that, we're moving back into what is actually normal. And this is a lesson that, you know, I think Stuart McAllister has been trying to gently over the last few years, Cameron, remind the two of us, but also a broader audience of like, let's clarify for a moment what normal actually is.
Cameron (01:46.766)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (02:02.126)
Yeah. mean, I think I've told this story before. 1989, was, you know, I was born in, there are these, there's this new trend of videos, Nathan, that if you're ever on social media, which you never are, but if you were, you would see that if somebody's birth date begins with one nine, then they flash a bunch, a series of archaic images to signify just how old you are. Yeah.
Nathan (02:24.029)
Back when phones had chords and all sorts of weird things.
Cameron (02:28.558)
Precisely. So I was born in 1984 there. So yeah, I'm in that archaic category. Nathan was born, I think, in 1909, precedes his birth year as well. Yep. So 1989, I remember my dad coming home from a trip with a piece of the wall from Germany when the wall came down. So in 1989, the wall comes down. That was a huge symbolic moment. This is also when Francis Fukuyama says, he declares this time the end of history.
Nathan (02:35.677)
Nope. Yes, that's correct. Two years later.
Cameron (02:57.998)
And it looked like liberal democracy had truly won the day communism fell. And now we were going to proceed in a different way and with stability and economic prosperity, Western order. That's a great, those are well-chosen words. And for a tiny little span of time, a tiny little span of time, a little redundancy there, that seemed to be the case.
Nathan (03:13.787)
A Western Order.
Cameron (03:27.822)
And then it came to an abrupt end. You could say, I think a lot of people would point to September 11th as a picture, but there's a deeper sense in which that stability as it was being conceived never really existed in the first place. But the point here is this, that this was a tiny little span of time and it was an anomaly. We tend to assume, some of us who were born when we were
do tend to assume, this is the norm and we should expect this kind of comfort, ease and stability. But if you put your nose into a history book, you will find very quickly that that is not the case at all. Even something like, I mentioned this earlier, Nathan, the Pax Romana, the Rome, the peace established by the Roman Empire. Well, you don't have to press too deeply to find that that was a brutally enforced peace. And so that, I mean, really,
Nathan (04:11.389)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (04:26.638)
Conflict, you might say, is the rule when it comes to world affairs. And here we are.
Nathan (04:33.053)
There's an interesting way that this plays out, think for us spiritually too in our concepts of how we pray and think about comfort and security. I've been listening to, as I was running around, let's see, somewhere between Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Delaware in the last month. And listening to, for those of you who are interested in the outdoors or outdoorsmen, the Meat Eater, Stephen Rinella, the book series on the long hunters, the hide hunters and the mountain men, historical looks at some of the original big
hunting eras of American culture, but all of those Cameron are extremely violent and just staying alive. And from the, even from a native perspective of you didn't die from cancer. You died from whoever was over the hill. mean, you're, you lived in a constant state of keeping your head up and looking at the horizon. Cause you were, some tribe was about to come get you and that you were about to go get that tribe. And this group of people were coming in and I mean,
Cameron (05:07.458)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (05:28.684)
Hmm.
Nathan (05:31.825)
Just even in our recent history, there's that sense of like, there wasn't a legal system. was like, well, if these guys thought that this person did something bad, they went and shot them. And that was seen as justice. And so some of these things, like we don't have to go like deep European history. It's just the way that the world has worked where your life is fragile. You're about to be taken out by a bear or your neighbor.
And it's hard for us to embrace the fact that that's normal. But one of things that it does is it's not just like, the Middle East is going to Middle East. No. Also, I think there are things that we, as you age and some, some of us grow older at faster rates than others, you just start recognizing, no, the things in the relationships that I have around me, the people that I know, things in my neighborhood, things in my local school, these are not okay.
and they are not the way that I would like them to be. And so that's the bigger thing that I want to just lean into here is like, can.
a pattern that it is okay to recognize that the world is not the way that you want it to be. We're just trying to figure out, how do we live well in the midst of that?
Cameron (06:47.084)
Let me add some, a few observations to, to I think underscore your point, Nathan. I think of Ayaan Harsali in a Q and A and she was, you know, her background, of course she came from, from an Islamic background from believe Mogadishu originally. So she has a unique authority when she's talking about the strangeness of Western order. So somebody asked her in the Q and A.
And it was a very Western centric questions, the kind of question I would ask. was a lady, obviously educated saying, you know, this political polarization that we're dealing with, why are we so divided? You know, the very kind of questions I've asked before. And Ion Hercele just says, do you have siblings? And the whole auditorium just starts to erupt in laughter. And then she basically just says, look, I come from
I grew up in places where there is no real established social order. What little order there is, is established by power. And this is the rule of thumb, wherever you go. mean, the usual way, this is just what you were saying, Nathan, but you don't have to look very far. But if you try to resist me or if you disagree with me, I'm going to kill you. And then she said that is very, very persuasive. Now it's not necessarily always I'm going to kill you or it's
Well, I'm going to destroy your reputation or I'm going to leverage whatever influence and power I have over you to crush you and make sure that you don't get your way. We see plenty of those antics here as well. So here we're talking about something that's very, that's rooted in human nature itself, this inherent antagonism. And it's a very real thing. And when you see a
That is an achievement. That's part of what she's trying to say there. you have a society where it's possible to walk down the street as a woman and not be sexually assaulted, that is an achievement, not something that you just slide into.
Nathan (09:02.646)
Mm But here's, here's what I was thinking Cameron of how do we get to this? And then
To put it bluntly, we produce our written works and history and visions of the way that we want the world to be in times of peace. And so you can have a, look at, let's take English classical literature and the Jane Austen's or the whoever you want to, George Eliot's and the people on their estates surrounded by sheep and fields writing literature.
Cameron (09:33.196)
Yeah, the pastoral writers.
Nathan (09:35.431)
Pastoral right so it's this idea of a it creates a vision of a time you don't have Like African Americans were not opening fine art museums in Mississippi in 1782 There wasn't there wasn't a Jewish Academic historical analysis happening in Germany in in 1942 And so there is something about we we write our vision of the world in between the conflicts
Cameron (09:48.215)
Mm-hmm, yep.
Cameron (10:02.958)
.
Nathan (10:06.757)
Now, that's not to say that there aren't phenomenal memoirs and thoughts and deep and rich things that come out of that, but those are written almost more as a description of the past as if we've overcome it rather than this. And I think that's like your Solzhenitsyns and some of those guys are reflective of saying there's no, there's something deeper about humanity here. But, just to recognize that most of our cultural elements are constructed in times of peace.
Cameron (10:24.078)
reflecting.
Nathan (10:33.199)
And we live in a time in which everybody can publish everything in real time all the time. And that changes the way that we think about the nature and the structure of reality around us.
Cameron (10:37.518)
Mmm.
Cameron (10:42.582)
Yeah, I mean, think that's a really good observation. I there are two categories there. There's the idealism where you write idealistic, and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, where you're writing idealistic visions and you necessarily need stability to do that and you need the resources to do so. So if you're involved in the hardscrabble business of survival, the Donner party weren't writing memoirs when they were at Hastings Cutoff, for instance.
Nathan (11:07.709)
Well, exactly, or I mean, I we can put even like, I grieve over looking at like the war in Sudan. And you think, what would it take to go from that to the Sistine Chapel?
Cameron (11:14.464)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Cameron (11:26.306)
Well, so there's, yep, no. There's, well, so there are the times of conflict and war that swallow all the possibilities of that. So you need that there's the idealistic vision that depends on stability, but then there is another space for, and it also requires stability, but it's reflection. So that's Solzhenitsyn, but Solzhenitsyn in exile. So it's not Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag, because in the Gulag he's surviving.
Nathan (11:26.415)
Entropy does not entropy does not trend in that direction
Cameron (11:55.841)
In exile in America, he's waking up at something like 4 a.m. every single morning to unburden his memory with as much as he's tried to commit so that he has this sort of sacred vocation to bear witness to what he experienced. So the reflection tends to be more somber. Solzhenitsyn didn't make any friends. At first, everybody wanted to welcome him as an American hero, but then he made that Harvard speech and very quickly,
you know, basically alienated everybody in the audience by not singing America's praises because, no, he's, he's had the reflection and he's going to speak in a prophetic mode, not in a sentimental mode or a patriotic mode. And I think that's, but the reflection piece is what's not, what is missing Nathan from news and reportage. And it's always been a problem with news, but it's worse now because of the instantaneous nature that you just pointed out. And also.
There's, so there's, on the one hand, there's a hunger for the answer, right? It's the, you know, this is to deflect from the Epstein files. This is about oil. This is about, know, you, you name it. But then there's also a tremendous market for this stuff. And there's the, the content monster that just gobbles up everything that goes up there. So these news, all, all of the different content makers have to just keep, they have to keep putting stuff up there. So some people it's, this is really cynical. Some people I don't think are even that invested in
I think they know full well who knows what any of this really means, but we've to get the article up. AI will only, mean, AI is only going to talk about spitting out content instantaneously. Here it is. And will people gobble it up? Yeah, they will.
Nathan (13:29.533)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nathan (13:35.965)
Right.
Nathan (13:40.433)
Well, let's pivot here because I'm susceptible to all of this. You are. Everybody listening is. mean, and if you don't think you are. You are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so think about this a second, but let's. Let's let's transition a little bit into saying OK, so what is how do how do how then when you in when you have something that that slaps you in the face. Reality is the thing that you can bump into.
Cameron (13:47.276)
Not I, yeah, sure, yep.
No, you're kidding yourselves on. Just be introspective. You are.
Nathan (14:10.647)
And that happens.
What are the options? One of them is despair, for sure. Depression, bitterness, anxiety. And sometimes that's all very understandable. But there has to be a better way to live in the midst of it. And obviously as Christians we're going to get there. But can we head in that direction here a little bit?
Cameron (14:35.757)
Yeah, well, I'd like to make a larger philosophical point. The notion that we can understand it all, if you just put it so boldly, is absurd. But we nevertheless seem to think that we can somehow, because we have such an abundance of information and we have so many amazing tools, we do seem to assume that ideally speaking, all things being equal, we should be able to get answers on everything and we should
be able to gain some sort of a deeper or comprehensive even understanding of all of the events that are transpiring. But of course, there's no way that can happen. Nobody's ever been able to do that. And just because we have the very online world doesn't change a thing. So I think there is tremendous freedom and liberation to be had, not necessarily anxiety, if we just say,
We can't possibly understand everything. We can't possibly wrap our heads around it. And also history teaches us that the most difficult time to understand is our own present moment. So if we accept that, and then we realize, and we don't feel this terrible sense of guilt because I can't know the future, I don't know the future, then I think there is some real freedom there that can be had.
Nathan (15:43.133)
Mm hmm. I'm looking
Cameron (15:58.051)
Does that take away uncertainty? No. mean, uncertainty is part and parcel of reality and human life. You're a contingent creature. can't possibly, you're not God. So I think when we, but if you embrace the opposite vision by default, I should know everything. We should understand all of this. I need the full comprehensive answer. Well, then you are in a position, I think, of feeling a good deal of unnecessary anxiety and fear.
Whereas if you accept humbly your human station, you'll be able to navigate this with more wisdom, with more humor. People who don't buy into that, swallow all of that, can laugh at some of this stuff without being despairing. So you don't want to set yourself up for despair. You want to think in human and normal terms.
Nathan (16:57.501)
Hey everybody, if you like a podcast with the type of content in which one of the speakers named Cameron reminds you and uses words like contingent creature, please give us a like, share, subscribe, or if you want to pass this along to somebody that you think it'll be uniquely helpful for, that would be a blessing to us. If you want to support the work that we do in a broader sense, you can do so by visiting www.toltogether.com to make a donation or check in on some of the other things that we're up to.
Cameron, I'm playing with a phrase in my mind as you're speaking there of...
Wanted to say confident resignation, but hopeful resignation And resignation sounds like the wrong So let me let me Let help me develop a term here. I'll just give you like an example of the thing that happened to me last night I was after work hours something popped up and I was like, I wonder what this person thinks about it had something to with Iran or And I was watching that and one of my kids walked up and said hey dad, you know play this board game with me
Cameron (17:41.539)
Well, resignation. Yeah.
Nathan (18:02.139)
Yes, yes, I do shut the laptop. I mean that thing was very interesting but well, so And so I I thought
Cameron (18:05.795)
How irresponsible of you, Nathan. These are world events. What is wrong with you? Just kidding.
Nathan (18:15.805)
What it what like how do I want to phrase what I hope that I would do more often in that situation is It's not resigning in the sense of giving up. It's saying I know and
I'm going to lie back on the couch here and let you psychoanalyze what I'm trying to say.
Cameron (18:33.647)
Will you be on your deathbed thinking, if only I'd kept the laptop open and learned more about the escalation in Iran. Yeah, and spent less time with my kids. You you put it that way, sounds, it's kind of a no-brainer. Well, the word resignation, I'm not necessarily opposed to it. My only hesitation, we care a lot about words on thinking out loud, sorry, but.
My only hesitation with resignation is that it tends to bring up sort of for me, stoical connotations. And I tend naturally in that direction. And it has been a discipline for me to recognize that stoical resignation is not a Christian virtue, a pagan virtue.
Nathan (19:07.165)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (19:16.347)
Well, so I'm trying to add an adjective to the front of that to make it like productive resign... No, it's... What I'm trying to do is resign myself to the fact that the world is not the way that I would like it to be. And that there are still meaningful things for me to do. I still believe that God is good. God has a plan, redeems, orchestrates orders by His sovereign will, sees things to the conclusion that He has.
Cameron (19:21.849)
Constructive resignation.
Cameron (19:41.423)
I'm going make you roll your eyes here. I like hopeful realism, which is what we use here sometimes on TOL because we are realism in the sense that we recognizing the nature of life under the sun, but also hope in the living hope in Jesus Christ who is King and is returning to judge the quick and the dead, to wipe away every tear and
Nathan (19:47.805)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (20:11.137)
and make all things new. that therein lies a kind of beautiful balance because you can, you're not going to lie about the grimness of the situation. You're going to be honest when things are bad, but you're also going to be honest enough to say, yeah, but the badness, the darkness doesn't have the final word. And you live in the light of that expectation.
Nathan (20:32.081)
Yeah, I guess I want to, within your word of realism, which I am on board with and appreciate, point out and recognize that being realistic means me letting go of a lot of stuff too, I can't, but it's not letting go in an irresponsible way. It's saying, I want to properly understand, anytime that I feel a little bit overwhelmed in life, Cameron, I'm usually...
Cameron (20:47.672)
Yeah, I hear you.
Nathan (21:01.475)
overestimating my importance in that system. I'm trying to push into the realm of the things that only the Lord can handle. I mean, there's a little bit of Jesus and his whole thing about anxiety and anxiousness and worry. The next day has enough trouble of its own. And so I think most people who know me, I'm a very curious, very energized, strategizer, daydreamer, go get it. Love the world of ideas.
Cameron (21:15.545)
Yeah, sure.
Nathan (21:31.533)
and love people and being engaged in the physical world. So I don't have a problem with not doing enough. I have the opposite problem, which is I try to do everything.
Cameron (21:32.599)
All true. Yep.
Can't confirm.
Cameron (21:43.139)
Yep. think, okay, here's an illustration. When you're on an airplane, this happens to me sometimes, I'm flying a second nature to me, but every now and then I'll be on a plane and there will be a very heavy bout of turbulence. And sometimes unthinkingly I'll grip the seat and start to white knuckle it and I'll clench up and I'll get real tight. And it occurred to me one day, I'm expending a great deal of physical energy here.
And it is accomplishing zero. In fact, all it's doing is upping my heart rate and making me anxious. so, I just thought, I just, mean, just said, you know, I just thought, just let go, just let go. I mean, you're gripping the seat tighter is not going to change the turbulence. Yeah, this works for me, but not for the pilot, isn't it? But yes. So there's, I think there's a sense in which you look at.
Nathan (22:15.037)
You
This is such a great analogy.
Nathan (22:30.213)
Now the pilot can't do that, but the passenger can.
Cameron (22:41.071)
When you look at what's going on, the convulsions in the world and the culture, you care and you're invested on the one hand, but I think resignation isn't a bad word. You resign yourself to the fact, there are only so many things I can do. After all, ultimately, we, humanity, is not in the driver's seat. I especially am not. Again, not a recipe for quietism. We do what we can, where we can.
Nathan (23:00.871)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (23:09.533)
It's what is God actually asking me to do? And is he asking me to sit there white knuckling the airplane seat? I don't think so. And I'm using that metaphorically for myself, just for everybody listening for life in general of like crippling anxiety and clinging is not listed as part of the fruit of the spirit.
Cameron (23:11.812)
Yeah.
Cameron (23:16.151)
seat. Right. No.
Cameron (23:30.401)
No, in fact, scripture has some really good choice words about anxiety and worrying about, let tomorrow worry about itself, for instance, sufficient for you as the day that you have. I'm butchering the wording, but you get the point. mean, every day brings with it a list of, usually in my experience, Nathan, when you give way to anxiety, a good deal of that anxiety is expended toward things that are beyond the realm of your responsibilities.
Nathan (23:59.707)
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I overestimate myself in them.
Cameron (24:00.813)
Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and ironically, what happens for me, at least in bouts of anxiety, I worry about things that I don't necessarily have any control over. And I certainly don't, that are not on my to-do list. And then the items that actually do need my attention get neglected because I'm worried about stuff that I can't, that I can't even do. there, but there, meanwhile, there's a laundry list of things that I do need to do and people who could use my help and they get neglected. So I think.
Nathan (24:19.143)
Well, there you go. Yeah.
Nathan (24:25.415)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Cameron (24:30.165)
Yeah, understanding you are sitting in your living room and you can speculate and learn more facts on the ground about what's going on in Iran, or you can spend quality time with your children.
Nathan (24:44.647)
There's a man who's been helpful for me to observe in life. doesn't live locally, but I spent quite a bit of time, guess, in the past watching him work through difficult, situations within church and church leadership and districts and conferences and that kind of thing. And he repeatedly just says, Lord have mercy. And I always thought, that's kind of a bit, but the older I've gotten, the more I'm like,
That is the appropriate response here because I think there's a prayer in there asking the Lord to intervene, but there's also a reorientation of the heart of the person who prays that of recognizing that the Lord is in control of this. And it's not a quietism, it's not stepping back, it's just clarifying what the actual boundaries are and admitting it's a difficult situation. I find myself in these times,
the Psalms just start making more sense. and so the resources are there, but to loop back around to where we started, Cameron, is that I think...
Cameron (25:46.124)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Cameron (25:53.891)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (25:57.053)
I was reading just recently in Alan Kreider's The Change and Conversion, he's looking at some of the stuff that was happening in the early church and seeing an element here where as culture gets crazier, it's reverting back to the conditions out of which Christianity grew. And so as the world around us gets weirder, the New Testament will make more sense.
Cameron (26:23.724)
Hmm.
Nathan (26:23.837)
Because if we have been living in a historical anomaly, there's some stuff that's like, what is Jesus talking about here? That as we push into a broader degrees of recognizing that there might be some cracks in the foundation of our, you know, worshipful hope in the political system, in the economy, in the educational system, in the medical system, in the technological developments. Good things happening in all of those.
But you and I both know that we have way as a culture, we have way over invested, undue amounts of worship in those categories in the times of prosperity. And then when we run into difficulties in our personal lives, in our physical bodies, in our spiritual relational home church, county, country, world, they were like, what do do with this? Like, no, okay, wait a second. The resources have been laid out for us in this and
Cameron (27:02.775)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nathan (27:20.283)
And was reading something last week of somebody that I appreciate on a totally unrelated topic, who then at the end kind of gave a little plug for his Buddhist vision of the world and he just was not aging well. And cause I was thinking, man, when I look at the world, what it does not need is balance and needs redemption. Like I don't like it, like in my realism here, it's just looking at the world and be like, okay, there's not a
Cameron (27:43.599)
Hmm.
Nathan (27:50.183)
There's not a balance here that's going to there. isn't some golden mean that we're philosophically going to work ourselves toward. that that is going to, it's going to have to be helped from the outside. If anything really lasting comes out of this. so again, it's not resignation. It's just maybe realism gets it. There has to be, if you're listening to this and you know what I'm trying to say, please send me an email info at toldeather.com. Cause I'm poking at something I can't quite.
grasp and I would love your help to articulate it moving forward.
Cameron (28:20.399)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think that's well said, Nathan. mean, the great temptation and danger in times of affluence and prosperity is to think that you're self-sufficient in some way. And I think we reached that place for a while in that anomalous time. And now here we are in a moment where we've built things that are outstripping our ability to control them. AI, that's not a first. This has happened before.
And AI interestingly is getting compared to the, and I'm not introducing a different topic. This is a concluding note. I'm just saying it's getting compared sometimes to the whole nuclear breakthrough. Not necessarily because it's apples to apples or anything like that, but because here you are playing with unleashing a form of power that you don't necessarily have full control over at all.
Nathan (29:16.125)
It's worse than that though because with the nuclear option that had a a broader political governmental Oversight now we're talking about individuals and private companies having even more power. Yeah, sorry. Anyway, sorry I had to do my it's worse than that and I got you off of the main point
Cameron (29:25.581)
Yeah, no, this is worse. No, this is worse. Yeah. No, no, but it, really is though. But yeah, so we, we come once again to a place where we are out of, out of that time of relative stability, where we see, where we see a lot of, yeah, growing conflict and confusion.
Nathan (29:47.005)
But humans being out of control doesn't mean that order can't resolve or result if you believe that there is a God who works in wills and accomplishes his way.
Cameron (29:51.022)
Not at all.
Cameron (29:57.377)
And this is where the words of the New Testament on having faith, the gift of faith and abiding in love and a living hope, all of it, they are going to make a lot more sense because we're once again in a moment where we see the nature of the world and we're not behind a of veil of illusion that's hiding that from us.
Nathan (30:23.129)
If you're struggling with this, think Cameron, the other difference is that you and I were born in an era, we were too young, like our peers weren't the ones going to Iraq and Afghanistan. From the American perspective, we don't know what war is on a homeland. Like, meet somebody from another country who's like, yeah, during World War II, like all my grandparents' farms and businesses were bombed.
Cameron (30:35.567)
Mm-hmm, yep.
Cameron (30:43.629)
Yep, not at all.
Cameron (30:50.415)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (30:51.029)
There isn't anybody in America who has that same culture-wide repercussion. There aren't miles and miles of World War II trenches etched all over the face of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Our experience has been different. And so I find it very helpful to go and read the biographies and the memoirs and reflections of faithful Christian people who have lived through and are at this time living through extreme difficulty.
Cameron (31:02.018)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nathan (31:18.555)
and seeing the way in which they live out their face. And so there's a little bit of me that sometimes I just feel like I need a slap check of reality to say some of the suffering that we talk about, we still have it really good as Americans right now. and so let's, let's appropriately temper our paranoia and anxiety. just because part of the realism is also looking around and saying, we don't have a whole lot to complain about comparatively.
Cameron (31:39.759)
Hmm.
Nathan (31:48.059)
And maybe you do, maybe you will in the future. I don't know where you're listening to this from or what's going on in your life, but let's not forget to give thanks for the good that we see in the world around us and not just be sucked into a vortex of the evil and the brokenness of what's wrong. I think we're going to find some, some health if we're able to worship properly and then contextualize what we see happening here.
Cameron (32:11.423)
Amen. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.