All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys, so this will be interesting and different.
It's Benji Graves from the Vision Community Church in Marsing, Idaho, and he was William Norman Griggs' pastor.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, thanks.
And yeah, William was a great man.
Yeah, he sure was, and a very good friend of mine.
And so I'm friends with Scott Watson, and we were talking, and one of the things that's been of interest of mine lately is especially strategizing about arguing to the right about foreign policy and kind of breaking the narrative that we have to keep, especially these terror wars going in the Middle East from now on.
And I think some headway is being made there, but obviously one real problem is certain parts, I guess, certain different factions and sects of Protestant Christianity have it that we have to keep all these wars going, or do whatever Israel says, or all these things, because it's all caught up in End Times prophecies.
And I know there are probably, I'm just guessing, what, two or three or four hundred different kinds of Protestant Christian churches in America or something?
I have no idea, but I know it's a million, and everybody all has their different opinions about what the Scriptures say regarding all kinds of things.
But what I'm really interested in is your advice, really, about how to talk to fundamentalist Christians about the wars, not really in a way of arguing about interpretations of the Bible so much, because I'm certainly in no position to argue about stuff like that, and that seems to me like, you know, possibly not that productive.
Maybe there are some ways to incorporate that, but just anything else, any other kind of advice other than arguing about what this and that chapter of Mark says, kind of thing, to change people's mind, to get them to look at this stuff in a little bit different way in order to really break that narrative that the conservative Christian right loves the wars, supports the Republicans and their wars, which has been a major common and very powerful narrative underlying the history of certainly the last 20 years.
So the floor is yours.
I guess I'm just seeking your counsel about, you know, what would you tell people to change their mind?
Well, I work on that pretty much every day of my life.
It is a huge narrative, and it goes back, you know, we have this term, evangelicals, and, you know, as I talk to friends, I say, I'm not even sure what that word means anymore.
You know, that was a word that just simply indicated that people believed in the born-again experience in Jesus Christ, but now it's more of a political thing.
And you can go all the way back to the, it's an underlying cultural problem.
You know, you can go all the way back to the Crusades and see, before that even, and then British Empire.
I mean, for many, many years, people have been doing terrible things and blaming it on God.
And really, so you go back to the beginning of America and the whole Jonathan Winthrop's famous speech where he proclaims the city on the hill, that was, you know, the second colony here in Massachusetts Bay Colony.
And that comes from a scripture in Matthew 5, which just talks about us being the salt of the earth and that we're a city on a hill.
And it was never meant to be applied to a nation or a country.
It was meant to be applied to people in the church, that we'd be a city on a hill showing what Jesus should do.
So part of this is, part of the problem is this is so heavily ingrained.
And like you said, it does have to do with end time stuff, eschatology.
And when I'm talking to somebody who professes to be a Bible-believing Christian, because I know that background, that is a way that I go at it, you know, because what they're banking on is a thing called post-millennialism, which means that we're going to make the world a better place.
And once we get the world good enough, Jesus is going to return.
And that's just not a biblically defensible position, really.
I mean, yes, there are a lot of theories, but not all of them are biblically defensible.
And that one is not.
The Bible clearly shows that things are going to get worse and worse until Christ's return.
And so I do go at it with that.
But one of the biggest problems in this whole thing is that ingrained sense.
I can reason with an individual, and I can reason with an individual, and they agree with me, and I can bring up the scriptures, and they agree with me until something happens like Iran or the Iraqi militias that retaliate against the embassy.
Right.
And then all of a sudden, the same people that were agreeing with me, you know, 15 minutes earlier are going, hey, we need to bomb somebody.
And that is, like I say, pretty ingrained in the cultural religion.
I almost put Christianity in quotes, cultural Christianity that's in this country.
So I wish I had a really good and direct answer for you.
But one of the problems is our culture has this idea that America is somehow in Bible prophecy somewhere, and that's just not true.
They try to work it to make it happen, but it's just really kind of silly on its face.
And then the idea that we are God's arm of righteousness in the world, and, you know, so I spend my time refuting that a lot, that we're somehow God's arm of righteousness in the world, and therefore if America does something, it's right.
You know, I would say what's come more in current history is this idea that, you know, being a Republican and being Christian is synonymous somehow, so.
Right.
Well, coalition politics do a lot to reinforce all that, and the big irony is, right, that it was Jimmy Carter who really organized the kind of Protestant right wing to vote for him, and then they turned around and supported Reagan four years later, and have been part of the Republican coalition ever since then.
But they were really kind of, I don't know what they say in America, in the Muslim world they call it quietist, right, where they're really focused on religion and let, you know, render under Caesar, man, leave all that stuff to these people who are concerned about their secular life here on earth, I'm here for my afterlife test, and I'll focus on that, and, you know, weren't always really an organized political force, and I guess it comes and goes, but that's the current iteration of the Christian right really comes from that, I guess.
Yeah, and it does, and the sad thing is, I mean, we're always going to have some, you know, crazy people on whatever end, but there's just a lot of people who I think are reasonably intelligent folks, even somewhat dedicated believers that just fall into this stuff because, again, the cultural tide is so strong on it, it's almost assumed, you know, not really in our church, they don't assume that's going to happen, but with all of the, you know, military Sundays, and back when people were saying, you know, in the Iraq war, when people were saying we were sending our soldiers as missionaries, you know, that stuff is just completely senseless, and again, like I said, yes, there are some people who interpret the Bible in different ways, but there are ways that you can't actually interpret it unless you're just trying to really work it, and that's one of them, and that's, you know, so as I think about this question, as I knew it was going to come up talking to you, and I talked, again, I talk to people about it all the time, and Scott Watson, who you mentioned, he and I discuss it quite a bit, and it's an easy thing to reason with someone that the Bible clearly does not teach this, that this is not the model that Jesus set forth, that even in the situation where Jesus before Pilate, and Pilate's saying, I have the power to release you, and he says, Jesus answers and says, you know, my kingdom's not of this world.
If it was, my servants would rise up and fight.
You know, it's just not the model that you see at all in scripture, but there's a lot of momentum happening right now with people like, I don't know if you know Rick Joyner or Lance Wallnauer or Paula White, who's the White House spiritual advisor, which just seems like something out of a cartoon movie, and all of a sudden, a lot of people who consider Paula White a complete heretic are like celebrating her, because, you know, she's up there with the president.
Well, she's a dominionist, and dominion theology teaches that we need to take over these seven spheres in society.
One's government, one would be the arts, one is religion, education, and I can't remember the other three offhand, but they're very dedicated to that, and Paula White's part of that group, and the problem with that is that what follows is, okay, if we take over all of these spheres in society, not only here, but in other countries, then we can basically Christianize the world, and then Christ can return, which is, again, is post-millennialism, is not defensible scripturally, but that's what seems kind of crazy when we just hear it from the outside like that is a big driving force.
We know Mike Pence is very likely a reconstructionist dominionist, and they, in their minds, I mean, if you listen to Pompeo, he talks like he's the most Christian guy in the world, and yet they can go do these things, because in that whole setting of the dominion thing and all that comes this end justifies the means mentality.
We're trying to get there to, you know, make the world a better place.
You listen to George Bush saying, you know, God has told me to go into Iraq, or George Bush the older talking about Somalia the same way.
God is sending us on this mission, and that stuff is not biblically defensible.
They call it Christian.
It's not Christian theology, so it makes it really confusing, and yet people just kind of have this assumption it's what you're supposed to do.
God and country rallies and all this stuff, and that's just not what the Bible says.
Well, and you know, I could see how people get really caught up in this.
I mean, we're all brought up to believe that serving in the U.S. military is the one and only earthly exception to thou shalt not kill.
Remember that time we fought Hitler?
Come on.
Give me a break.
God's on our side.
Everybody knows that.
No question about that, but then so I guess he's starting off with that premise because we all kind of brought up that way, and then I can see people all caught up in the being attacked by fundamentalist Muslims and the whole thing right at the turn of the millennium and all this, and I can understand how they get caught up in all of this stuff, but then the rapture never did come, and so now here we are.
It's 20 years later.
We've had all this violence.
We got all the cities that our soldiers fought over time and again fall right back into the hands of everybody who's supposedly the enemy over there anyway, and all of these things, and all this time has passed, and so I wonder, see, I'm not a religious guy, so I don't really want to contradict people's faith because I'm not really in any position to say, well, see right here where it says this?
That shows that my interpretation's right, not yours.
I'm not in much position to argue that, but it seems more like by their fruits you shall know them just on the basic level kind of thing.
Even if it was a means to an end, what happened to the end?
We never did get our big magic show, and we're sitting here on a pile of corpses, so now what?
Right, and then what they do, the way that the rationale in their mind, the way that works is we must not have accomplished what we need to accomplish for that to happen, and this drives much of politics more than people think, the whole dominion thing that we've got to take over these things.
So we've got to go over, okay, we're going to Christianize Iran or Iraq or whatever, and then Afghanistan, obviously, and we're going to do this thing, and then we're going to prepare this place, but again, that's just not even, and it's not biblically defensible, and the amazing thing is it's so ingrained in the culture.
They can read things in the scriptures, like in Matthew 5, what we know is the Beatitudes, you know, we talk about blessed are the meek and blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed the merciful, the peacemakers, pure in heart.
You can read all that and then come away and go, yay war, you know, and you know, I watched the towers go down on TV, you know, that first go-around, I think I was, not for very long, but for a little bit I was kind of like, you know, we need to go bomb somebody or something, you know, but it didn't last very long in my head.
It lasted a long time in most people's heads, and then, you know, anything that comes along.
One of the interesting things here is when Muslims convert to Christianity very often in Middle East and other countries is they recognize that they're going from something that's real militant to something that's supposed to be peaceful.
That's one of the distinctives, and then it's got to be pretty confusing when then they have the United States, you know, bombing everyone in the name of God, because they're just reading their Bible and getting it right over there.
And we've got this ingrained cultural thing, and it creates this tremendous confusion.
It was just never what the Lord meant to have happen.
And then the other, at the heart of this also is this weird idea that when reading the Bible, America is somehow the new Israel.
So as they read about Israel and Old Testament prophecies, you know, taking the land of Canaan and, you know, God being those people to go and conquer these places or to, you know, force righteousness in some place or whatever, they're applying that to America somehow, which is just, again, there's just no reasonable way to do that biblically.
But it's a justification.
You know, most of these things are about self-justification.
They're about a way to say, hey, we're good guys.
They're the bad guys, you know?
Yeah.
Well, and that's really, you know, a huge part of Christianity, in my experience, is are you one of us, the Christians?
Are you one of them, the people who don't believe in the thing that we do, which is this makes them the same as everybody else on whatever their thing is, you know?
But there's, you know, that's very much a part of it is just the whole social psychology of who's team you're on.
Well, and also the Christians, what I would call sincere and biblical Christians, one of the reasons why, and there are a lot of them, I would put myself in that category, I hope.
I certainly would have put Will Grigg, Scott Watts, people like this.
I know many people who are believers and have nothing to do with this stuff.
But the thing is, they're the quiet ones.
So, you know, those of us that believe in a peaceful kingdom, those of us that believe in a kingdom where we don't just go blow people up, we're quiet.
We're out here, you know, we're telling people about the Lord.
We're sharing the gospel.
We're teaching the Bible.
But we're not, you know, we're not at all the Trump rallies, you know?
Yeah.
And so, you know, you don't hear that contingent as much.
You're hearing the contingent that is really the worst public face on Christianity.
Well, that's true.
So what can be done to change that?
Because, you know, as far as I understand, and I'm really rough on the numbers here, but something like 70% of Americans call themselves Christians.
Maybe it's down to 60 something now.
But still, super majority of Americans call themselves Christians.
And it's a much smaller number than that, who are, you know, really the end times, force Jesus to come back sooner than later, kind of thing that we're talking about.
Obviously, this excludes all the Catholics, and I think excludes a significant majority of the Protestants as well, right?
It's really a minority that we're talking about here that makes so much noise.
Right, right.
Yes, it is.
And it's also the minority that is making that much noise, and is kind of in this, we've got to force this thing into being, ends, justifies the means, whatever.
That group, because they're noisy, they tend to draw a lot of the people who otherwise would not go that way in, because there's this guilt thing.
You know, if you're not, it's like I said, if you're not with us, you're against this kind of thing.
And so, a lot of believers who are maybe looking for a nice word to say, don't think that deeply.
They just naturally get sucked into this.
You know, you go to a God and country rally, and it's all this stuff's going on, and the flags are going, and they put soldier after soldier after soldier up on the mic, and it just seems and feels to people like that's what a Christian is.
But that's an American cultural thing.
It's very distinct here.
You don't see it in countries where Christians are really being persecuted, and they're just out in the underground church and trying to do the work.
You know, one of the places the gospel is spreading the fastest in the world right now is Iran.
And of course, from my perspective, that's wonderful.
They're, you know, they're planting various things, and they're getting the gospel out there the way it ought to be.
So then you come into this whole thing of America's supposed to be the symbol of Christianity, going in there and, you know, blowing stuff up and talking about war all the time.
So I guess the best I can answer the question is to just keep trying to reason with individuals, which is what I do.
And I have seen a lot of them change their mind.
A lot of them, their eyes are opened.
You know, in our church alone, I look out on a group on Sunday mornings, and I know there's a group that agrees with me on this, and a group that definitely doesn't agree with me on all this.
But they listen.
And so just keep putting it out there that this is not what the Bible teaches.
And I do go at it from, you know, actual straight Bible teaching.
But why this is not, you know, and the city on a hill thing, just, you know, there was a rumor that went around for a while that Barack Obama said, this is not a Christian nation.
What he actually said was, this is not just a Christian nation.
But the big, there was all kinds of memes and flame wars going on, because Obama said, this is not a Christian nation.
And I said, that's the first thing he said that I agreed with him on.
You know, you just can't look at the corruption and the morality issues.
And I will say it's gotten better because of that.
You know, I can stand up now in front of our, which I did two weeks ago and say, this is not a Christian nation.
And that really nations aren't Christian entities.
You know, a Christian is a person and not an entity or an organization.
But, but I could say that now and people agree with me.
I mean, even 10 years ago, if I'd have said that, I think they'd have thought I was blaspheming the Bible.
So there is a little bit of a shift happening.
Yeah.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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Back to the partisan angle here, you know, I'm trying, I don't have that much access to conservative Christians to really try this stuff out on them.
But it seems like maybe, you know, an argument that look, just pretended to have been Bill Clinton this whole time.
And it was him that made these decisions to go to Iraq and to go to Yemen and whatever, all these different things that are going on.
Or, you know, him and Al Gore, him and Hillary Clinton, and all these people, it had just been them this whole time, nobody you could identify with.
Wouldn't that change everything?
Like the fact that George Bush is the one doing is something that makes it something you could support.
But if it had been old face biting rapist Bill Clinton, you wouldn't have gone with him for one yard, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Or Obama.
You know, that's, it is extremely partisan.
I said, you know, I joke about it with I said, I've always known if I just want to be really popular, all I got to do is get up and make fun of Obama.
You know, I mean, it'd be the simplest thing in the world.
I don't do it, but it would be, it would be the same.
And you know, everybody be just going, yeah, you get everybody cheering in a hurry.
You know, I, I confront some of my friends when, when Obama just talked about red flag laws on guns for, you know, at a town hall meeting, and everybody was sure he was coming to take our guns and couldn't buy any ammunition at the store.
And then Trump puts it forward and Facebook is silent, you know.
And so I confronted some of my friends on that and said, you know, if this was Obama doing this, you'd be freaking out, but no, it's Trump doing it.
And he's supposed to be our guy.
And you see that in the issues of, I tell them if it was Bill Clinton, that the access Hollywood tape had come out on, I mean, there would be outrage everywhere.
But the same people who would have been outraged in this one just go, oh, it's no big deal.
It's just, you know, what a president does is what a president does.
You know, there's no question.
It's a hugely partisan thing.
It's important to say too about, you know, proselytizing around the world.
I know this is a big part of certainly Protestant Christianity is really focusing on trying to convert people.
And I remember as years ago now it would have been 04 or 06 or something like that.
And there was a guy on Fox news on Sean Hannity's show.
And you could tell that they were old friends.
He'd been on the show numerous times in the past.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing pastor?
Kind of thing.
And then what he has to say though, is I just came back from Asia and we have to stop the war in Iraq right now, Sean, because everywhere I go and tell people about Jesus, they say to me, Jesus, that's the religion of the Americans that invaded Iraq.
Get the hell out of my face.
I don't want to talk to you about that at all.
And they refuse to hear it.
And so what's more important, you know, Paul Wolfowitz's new, you know, social engineering project or my ability to get Chinese people to listen to the book of whichever it is.
And, and Sean Hannity, of course, is like, okay, well, thanks very much for your time.
And that was the end of the interview.
But it goes to show that, yeah, depending on what your priorities are, you might put the 10 commandments above the bill of rights, or you might put the sermon on the Mount above George Washington and the cherry tree, or what you might have to stop and think about the order of importance of these things.
But yeah, that's, that's the, you know, that's at the heart of it.
Also, that's what I was talking about with Iran, you'll hear that the gospel, I think in a very sincere form is going forward.
And yet, you know, they have to reconcile that with this America who supposedly represents the Lord.
Because the politicians get up and give those city on a hill speeches, and they get up and they, they quote Bible verses.
I mean, Bill Clinton was big on quoting Bible verses.
And, and, you know, but again, it's self justification.
It's not looking to see what those verses actually mean.
It's a self justification thing.
But I have no question that this has hurt missionary work all over the place, simply because of the representation of Christ that is not the representation we see in the scripture.
It's just, this is not there.
It's not a, it's not so much an interpretation issue.
It is largely an issue of people coming to a conclusion and then grabbing hold of the Bible and trying to find some way to use it to justify what they want to do anyway.
Yeah.
I want to get much positive reaction.
If you talk about the persecution of Iraqi and Syrian Christians, as the result of America's intervention there, or heaven forbid, the Palestinian Christians who suffer at the hands of the Israeli Jews.
Right.
Absolutely.
And that's something when the whole thing was at its height with ISIS and in Syria and the whole Syria part, especially because, you know, it's ironic that, that Assad and, and Saddam Hussein's another one that, of course, these are two that we just had to get out of there and do regime change.
And, you know, these are awful guys.
I'm not saying they're like, you know, nice guys you want to go to dinner with, but they were pretty big on protecting the Christians.
Part of their thing, partly that was because they were somewhat secularists and they're, they're trying to keep partisan, you know, violence down, but they were, they were protectors of many of the Christian populations around.
And a lot of people, I point that out a lot.
And when we went over there and, you know, basically back the people that slaughtered the Christians in a lot of ways.
So, I mean, there's just no way around that.
And, and, you know, another part of that thing with Israel, one of the reasons why that exists is there is a lot of Bible prophecy about Israel, but America again, wants to feel that somehow we are, are one with them as far as scriptural prophecy and what happens to Israel happens to us or vice versa or whatever.
And there's just, again, no biblical basis for that, whatever, again, it's not an interpretation issue.
It's people inserting things that are not in the Bible.
It's just not there.
And so I try to point that out to people and I try to, and I'd like to say with some success, with some success, there was way back in the, I think it was the first Men in Black movie.
And, and Tommy Lee Jones is talking to Will Smith and Will Smith says, why don't we just tell everybody that there's aliens?
Why do we have all this secrecy?
You know, people are smart.
They can figure it out.
And, and Tommy Lee Jones says something to the effect of, you know, people are smart, but the person is ignorant, paranoid, and all this other stuff.
And he made a good point that individually, I can get a lot of traction with people sitting down and talking and all this, but when the group comes together and the mob things there, they become paranoid.
You know, we got to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.
You know, they'll be coming for our children.
You know, these people, these people that play this up are, are really smart.
I mean, they know what they're doing.
They, you know, I mean, Soleimani was, of course, he was just about to blow up all of our embassies and kill thousands of people.
Right.
Well, but if we say that people go, oh, they wouldn't lie to us.
You know, and that's, I think that's part of the power of what I call the power of wanting something to be true.
When somebody really wants something to be true, they can believe things that just don't make sense.
And so I try to bring them to reality because, you know, that's the thing they want to believe.
We want to believe America did the right thing or does the right thing.
We want to believe we're the good guys.
We want to believe we're the beacons and city on a hill of light and all this stuff.
But so I try to use facts because you can tear that down pretty fast.
Yeah.
I mean, after all, if people want to believe so badly, they'll, they'll believe any lie.
Well, then it ought to be easy enough to get them to believe the truth.
You just give them the opportunity.
One would think, and you know, and so, and it is to some degree, but again, this is so culturally, it goes back generations.
Like I say, you can go all the way back and you can look at the way they justified the crusades.
You can look at the way the British empire went out and did its thing.
You know, the very founding of our, our country here and how, you know, a lot of terrible things, you know, all this manifest destiny, divine rights stuff.
Like I say, people do a lot of terrible things and blame it on God.
You know, we were going over slaughter all the natives in the West for their own good.
You know it's just, it's just mind boggling when you think about it, but the mob mentality is tough to beat the, the, the, Hey, we all go home and watch Fox news at night thing because you know, Fox news is the Christian news station.
Right.
Which is just terrible.
It's one of my biggest irritants, but they'll go watch that and they'll watch Sean Hannity and these guys, and they're just going, you know, these, these guys are just a step away from bombing us here.
We've got to go over there and do this stuff.
It's just, it's just, it's ingrained in the culture.
Yeah.
You know, my friend David was saying that what happens is, and he's the son of a pastor and you know, can talk.
And I believe is a, is a religious guy himself.
And he says that people really like all the Jesus stuff until it comes to foreign policy.
Then all of a sudden he just sounds like a hippie and they don't like hippies.
So then they just throw the new Testament out and go back to the old Testament where God says, kill them all.
And the more, the better and the more fun and that kind of thing.
And so, and if we view America as Israel in the old Testament, which they do, then that suddenly makes sense to them, which, you know, I know, I guess I don't know very much about this.
I have this as hearsay from the Methodist, what I, what I think the Methodist said, I might not even have been listening, but something about how no, cause see Jesus came.
And then, so the old covenant was fulfilled and now there's a new one, which is do what he says.
So that's not supposed to, you're not supposed to throw him and his hippie ways out and switch back to the old Testament and the, and the whole rest of the Protestant experience speaks to that.
So it seems like people would notice that that's kind of a cheat, isn't it?
It is.
It's you know, if you really look at the times he's on earth, they're really trying to get him involved in things like, you know, taking over the Romans and they were living under a very oppressive government.
And, and naturally the people were thinking, oh, he's going to rise up like a King, like David from the old Testament who comes in and rescues us from our enemies, which at the time would have been the Romans.
And, and, and so, you know, the whole culture then is looking for this.
And so Jesus comes and that's one of the reasons why he was a major disappointment to a lot of them because he didn't want to start a war and wipe out the Romans, you know, put Israel back on top and all that politically and militarily.
So Jesus comes and he's, he's really the antithesis of that.
He says, you know, you've heard it said an eye for an eye, but, you know, he's saying, turn the other cheek.
You know, there's it's stuff that people want to ignore, but then you've got the, the justification usually comes down to the innocent third party scenario saying, okay, yeah, Jesus said that.
I don't agree with this, but Jesus said that.
And so there, you know, we've got these people hurting, you know, they're, they're killing all these people's, Saddam's got weapons of mass destruction.
He's going to blow up a hundred thousand people.
Isn't our Christian duty to go over there and, and, you know, blow him up.
And then, and nevermind that we're bombing a whole bunch of civilians and all sorts of things because we're doing it for the greater good.
That's the ends justifies the means problem.
And that's what these people reason out.
They go, Oh Jesus.
Yeah.
I'll go, Hey, Jesus would not have done this.
They'll go, well, Jesus would have done it to protect all of those people over there.
And that's, that's when I come back to facts, you know, let's, let's look at how many people have died in the course of this thing.
Let's, you know, Saddam Hussein couldn't have even competed with, you know, our efforts over there.
So, and that's where we especially need anti-war veterans to come for.
Cause that raises the whole question of like, would Jesus really a sent this guy to go patrol around Afghanistan, getting a couple of firefights with militia men, lose his best friend, Bobby, and his right leg, and then come home and have it all be for nothing.
Cause that doesn't really seem again with the whole rapture never happened thing.
We've been there and back.
We've seen Mosul be conquered and liberated and conquered and liberated again, depending on how you define which side and, but the, you know and, and all our guys we've had a couple of million guys, a few million Americans have gone and women too, have gone to these wars and come back again.
And it seems like that's where, this is where their voice can be the most effective is in pointing out the real sacrifices that they have made and for what really, how did this prepare Afghanistan or Mesopotamia for any positive change in a religious way?
It's, it's a real dissonance, isn't it?
Between the real world and the news and what's going on and, oh, we're sending guys back to Mosul again.
Oh, okay.
And Sunday morning where you hear all this stuff is, it's a, it's a different world.
And yet it's easy to kind of transpose one onto the other and ignore the reality of the, the actual situation on the ground, I guess.
Right.
We're Americans, you know, I mean, and so since we're Americans, what we do must be right.
You know, it's a weird, weird sense of logic, but, isn't Jesus from Indiana?
Yeah, that's what I figure.
Yeah.
All American boy.
Jesus comes in and constantly says this, my kingdom is not of this world is plenty of opportunity to raise up a revolution if you want it to.
And, and he comes and he just keeps on that same message of, of spreading the gospel, which is far from anything that you could show as force.
And, and, you know, and he just, it's just a matter of preaching the gospel and he's almost ignoring the rest of the stuff that's going on.
And that really bothers a lot of the guys that are following him.
You know, they're looking for him to put him back on top, but the message of Jesus, as I said, a lot of people say there's all these different interpretations.
There's, there's some different interpretations of various verses, but as far as the mission of Christ and what he's commanded us to do and what he's called us to do, there's, there's plenty of interpretations, but there's only one that's obviously correct.
And I know that there could be people on another spot that say something different, but the reality is it's not vague.
It's not vague.
It's, it's right there.
And somehow they're getting something out of it because they want it to believe, say something.
It doesn't say, you know, that's, and, and like we said earlier, if somebody wants to believe something bad enough, they're going to believe it.
And then if they can go to a gotten country rally and have it affirmed or go on Fox news and have it affirmed, then, um, you know, they, they feel really good about it.
And then they come to church on Sunday at our place and I say something else and they kind of go, um, you know, uh, some of them listen and some of them I think go, well, you know, Benji means well, but you know, um, he just doesn't have all the information or something.
Well, that's the thing, right?
Is we got Tucker on Fox.
So that's a start.
And, and we got bring our troops home.us.
And we have more and more of these veterans groups who, you know, can argue that we support what Trump says, not what he does.
We're here to insist that he live up to his promise to end these wars.
And they are, you know, right-leaning would be Republican voters if their demands are met.
And that's the way, see, you got them on Sunday, we get them on Fox and we get them at the Trump rally too.
Now they're trapped.
Yeah.
This is the deal, right?
This is, we got to work on this formula to get people to, you know, think this stuff through in a different way, you know, and having a bunch of pro-Trump guys chanting, bring them home.
That's powerful, you know, for getting people thinking.
It is, it is.
And he is, uh, and he is driven by public opinion.
Um, you know, he's, uh, really concerned about that though.
You know, when, of course, when he ran, he said, I need to get out of these crazy wars.
I liked that part of what he was saying.
Um, you know, and that, uh, has not materialized.
Um, you know, the Afghanistan, I've got a great aunt who was a missionary in Afghanistan, her and her husband from the sixties on through 9-11 and the whole thing.
And she has a lot of perspective on what was going on there.
Uh, and just this idea of Christianizing places just doesn't, it doesn't work that way.
And it certainly doesn't work from a military perspective or a, uh, a show of force.
Again, it's just not the way Jesus operated.
It's not the way he told us to operate.
Then we try to, I try to point out, I have the stats and such of how many, um, you know, non-combatants have been killed in these various wars.
And I, I use that and, uh, try to explain to people that, well, all this stuff, I mean, let's face it, that the mess comes way back from us intervening in this stuff forever.
Um, you know, Iran in the sixties and certainly Iraq after that.
And then we've got to do a regime change somewhere.
So we have a check and balance against the other guy next door.
And, um, and it just keeps going.
And it, now, even after the Afghanistan report came out recently, and it detailed pretty well that nobody's really known why we were there the whole time.
Um, you know, a lot of people were interested in that and I was showing that to a lot of people.
And, and this is an example of the group think now they're agreeing and going, wow, this is terrible.
What in the world are we doing there?
Why did we go?
I know you wrote a book on this.
Um, and, uh, and they're, they're, these friends of mine, I'm talking about people I know personally, they're getting it, they're getting it, they're getting it.
Then all of a sudden, the news is showing them the stuff of where, uh, Iran retaliated and they're bombing the one, uh, I mean, just, they're basically attacking the one embassy and breaking out windows.
And all of a sudden, these people are already shifting in their minds going, we've got to do something about this.
You know, we've got to do something about this.
And I go, this is where it starts every time that we've got to do something about this part.
Yeah.
Well, you know what, you're doing the Lord's work.
Uh, I sure appreciate it.
And, um, it is worth it.
And, um, you know what it is just trying to get the truth across to people, uh, to do the right thing.
And, and you know what, it is kind of pushy, right.
To be a pastor, to be a radio host and tell people they're wrong all the time.
And yet you're just telling them to stop hurting other people.
So it seems like it's okay to be pushy about leaving other people alone, you know, in a way.
Absolutely.
Or, or just, you know, that that's just the disaster.
So, uh, I try to tell other pastors and I do, I've had, uh, some effectiveness convincing other pastors because they have that affects a bunch of other people.
So, uh, the more we can do that, the more we can, and people sometimes look like pastors will look at me and I'm, I'm on this whole anti-war side and they'll kind of look surprised.
Like you can do that, you know, like you can be a Christian American pastor and be against this.
Um, almost like they're surprised and they go, yes, yes, you can.
Right.
Yeah.
That's the whole key.
See, it's the example that you're saying this is the same thing that happened with Ron Paul is Ron Paul.
He looked on the surface straight out of a George W. Bush cloning machine, a little bit older, I guess the other way around, but they're both white, Protestant, Christian, married Republican politicians from Texas.
Right.
And, and all of this.
And, um, and they both have a single syllable last name and everything, you know, there's sitting right there, but, and, and, but then Ron goes, oh, I'm way more anti-war than Michael Moore.
And you could be too.
It's easy.
If you like your identity, you can keep it.
You could be a conservative Texas Republican like me and be way anti-war and millions of people change overnight, essentially on his permission, which is exactly what you're talking about.
That when you say this stuff, they realize then that, wait, so I don't have to put on a tie dye t-shirt and grow my hair out and act like some, you know, TV caricature of a sixties hippie.
I could just be me only stop being stupid about this one horrible thing.
Okay.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and make application from the Bible, because it's easy for me to make application from the Bible that this stuff is wrong.
It's just wrong.
Um, and then they have to make a decision over whether or not they're actually going to believe the Bible or not.
Um, and that's, that's my tool.
That's my weapon because they're looking at me and saying they're Christians and they believe the Bible.
So, you know, well, let's see what it says.
Cause it's pretty easy to disprove this junk.
And after all, we're talking about just absolutely indescribable levels of horrific violence perpetrated against innocent people.
We're talking about high explosives coming through roofs and tearing civilians lives to shreds.
Oh, I ain't no playing that down.
You know, they don't, it's not like an old Western where they clutch their chest and go, Oh, and die.
And it takes a second.
It's yeah.
Well, one of the, one of the things that's helping, I think it's really helping is, you know, obviously when, when any country goes into invade somewhere, um, they demonize the other side, you know, the other side are all cannibals and they, you know, eat their children or something.
Um, and, uh, and so they've done that here, but when you carry on a war, as long as they have and say, Afghanistan, um, you know, people start to, to see these people and go, wait a minute, that's just a guy who works at McDonald's, you know?
Um, you know, that's a guy working at McDonald's trying to support his family.
He's not, you know, he doesn't even have a rocket launcher with him.
Um, and they start to go, wait a minute, maybe these are people.
And I try to really get that across that these are, this is not just some, uh, you know, a bunch of, uh, terrorist militias over there that we're bombing and all this kind of stuff.
These are people who go to work every day or try to try to support their family and are just trying to make it through.
You know, these are just real people.
Yeah.
And the government doesn't just lie about some things.
They lie about everything.
At least you should presume they're lying until they really, really prove their case.
You know?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You should always start from that.
They have a, they have an agenda and they're going to, and the end, and the end justifies the means and they'll tell you it's for the greater good.
But, uh, Jesus didn't operate on, on this concept of ends justifies the means he operated on do the right thing.
Um, you know, you do the right thing regardless of the consequences.
So all right, you guys, well, that is Benji graves.
Will Griggs pastor, uh, the great will Greg, our good friend.
And, um, he, uh, preaches at vision community church in Marsing, Idaho.
Thanks very much for your time.
Appreciate it.
Hey, thanks Scott.
The Scott Horton show and anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APS radio.com antiwar.comscotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org
