Host: In form, religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith and live out their convictions, no matter where they are.
Host: Sacred Honor is the courage to speak truth and live out your free speech.
Host: We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
Rick Green: Welcome to At the Core. It was Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green. Thanks for joining me today.
Rick Green: I was listening to that little spot on iVoterGuide as we were heading into the program. Before I jump into the topics I wanted to cover today, I just want to reiterate iVoterGuide.com. The election is here. Early voting is already starting in a few of the key states, and it will be pretty much everywhere by next week. We are down to just a couple of weeks here.
Rick Green: This is the time to go to iVoterGuide.com, not only for yourself, but for the people in your life. Most people have no idea who they are going to vote for. We kind of live, breathe, and eat it around here, so obviously our minds are made up fairly early. But most people out there are just now starting to pay attention to the elections, and maybe not at all.
Rick Green: You can be the catalyst. You can be the one to get it on their radar and get them the information they need to vote confidently, not just go in and vote for a name they recognize without knowing anything about that person, or vote just by guessing. You can actually go in confident that you are voting for the best candidate possible in each race. Notice I said the best candidate possible, not the perfect person, because that one does not exist, at least not on the ballot. You have to do the best you can with what you have, where you are, and iVoterGuide helps you do that in an informed way.
Rick Green: iVoterGuide is very easy to use. I'm a hyper-visual guy. I like colored Post-it notes around the desk, and I like to be able to see things in color. iVoterGuide does that. You can even see a dial, basically, on the candidates. Do they lean conservative or liberal? Are they very conservative or very liberal? Are they off the charts weird, like Talafrico in Texas? No, they do not actually have that part on the dial. I would add that to the dial just for this Texas U.S. Senate race. But the point is, it is an easy tool to use.
Rick Green: What I love about it is that I go back 27 years to helping Richard Ford start this thing back in Texas, beginning to comb through the votes, rate candidates, and look deeply. Do not just look at what they say they are for or against, but look at how they actually voted. What do they actually do?
Rick Green: If you have a candidate who has not been in office and does not have a voting record, you have to dig deeper. You have to look at how they have voted with their dollars. In other words, who have they given money to and supported in the past? All of that information matters, and it helps you get the full picture of what a candidate might do in office.
Rick Green: It is not a guarantee. You end up with some people who do not do in office what we thought they were going to do. Take John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. I would never have thought that he would be making as much sense as he does today and advocating for Republicans, even as a Democratic U.S. senator, because he is tired of the insanity of the Democratic Socialists of America and the other people in the Democratic Party.
Rick Green: I would not have guessed that he would have taken some of the positions he has taken over the last couple of years based on his track record and how I would have analyzed him as a candidate. There are outliers, and there are people who do not end up doing in office what we thought they were going to do. So again, you do the best you can with what you have, where you are, with all the information you can possibly get. I just think iVoterGuide does it better than anyone.
Rick Green: I love the way they gather all that information from all those different sources, plug it in, analyze it, and then rate those candidates. You can dive into all the information available there, but if you do not have time to do that, you can quickly go down the list and look at all the candidates who will be on your ballot and make your decision.
Rick Green: iVoterGuide does not tell you how to vote. They just give you the information. If you consider yourself to be ultra-liberal, you can vote for the candidates who line up with that. If you consider yourself to be a conservative, a patriot, a constitutionalist, and a Christian, then obviously you are going to vote for the ones whose ratings line up that way.
Rick Green: Sometimes in some of these races, there is not a huge difference between the candidates, but there is enough of a difference that you still need to vote for the one who most closely lines up. I think you should vote for the one who most closely lines up with biblical values. That is the guiding principle. That is the plumb line. That is what you measure everything against.
Rick Green: It is not whether they are from a particular race, religion, or area. Are they biblical? Which candidate is most biblical?
Rick Green: Today, in terminology that fits the boxes everybody checks, that is typically going to be conservative. That is going to be the more biblical candidate. In the old days, liberal would have meant the more freedom-loving person. That word was used that way. That is why my friend Dr. Everett Piper had the book Why I'm a Liberal and Other Conservative Ideas.
Rick Green: Under the old definition of the term liberal, it is not what we think of today. Today, you are considered liberal if you are for transgender transitions for children, against parental rights, for more and more government, and believe that government is smarter than the people and should tell us what to do in every situation. Those are what we would consider liberal positions.
Rick Green: Words mean things, and sometimes definitions change over time in a culture. Today, you would have to acknowledge that if a candidate appears to be conservative, that is more than likely the more biblical and constitutional position. If they are more liberal under today's terminology, they typically are not going to care what the Bible says, or they are going to misconstrue the Bible.
Rick Green: You might have someone like Talafrico in Texas who takes Bible verses and absolutely warps them. You talk about adding to the Word of God and subtracting from the Word of God, and the millstone being tied around your neck. This guy is an absolute heretic. There is so much evidence to that effect.
Rick Green: That takes me to one of the topics I was going to get to later in the program, but I think it fits right here. If you call yourself a Christian, that means you are a follower of Christ, a disciple of Christ. Therefore, the Bible is your instruction manual for life. It should be your guide on what is right and wrong and how you should live your life.
Rick Green: If you are a Christian, the things in the Bible that are right or wrong should be right or wrong in your life as well. If I am a disciple and follower of Christ, then I have to follow the commands. I get to follow the commands. It actually produces a better life, so I would be wise to do that.
Rick Green: If I am a follower of Christ and I believe in the Great Commission, then I am going to make disciples and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. He had a lot to say about how we treat our neighbors, what is right and wrong, and the right and wrong way to do things. The guidance is all there if we are willing to dive in and measure our candidates based on it.
Rick Green: There is a wonderful Scripture in Exodus that summarizes this. It says you should choose out from among you leaders of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. That is local, county, state, and federal government. The types of people you should choose should be able men who fear God, men of truth, and hate covetousness.
Rick Green: That is a great guide for us, almost a checklist. Are they capable of doing the job? Are they capable of getting elected? Are they capable of governing well? Do they have the skill set and the wherewithal to lead?
Rick Green: Do they fear God? Do they acknowledge that there is a Creator who is not just some intelligent design somewhere in the sky, but who is actively raising up and tearing down, judging, and measuring all of those things?
Rick Green: We fear God not out of a spirit of fear that is afraid to do things, but with awe and respect. There is a weight, a kavod, to the way we view God. Because of that, we want to follow God and follow His commands.
Rick Green: They are able, they fear God, and they are men of truth. They are willing to speak truth regardless of how popular it is and regardless of whether it makes people happy or sad. They are willing to speak truth.
Rick Green: We often say, “Speak truth in love.” My pastor, Jimmy Pruitt, says, “We speak the truth because of love.” I think that is a great way to describe it. We speak truth because we love people. We do not want to lie to them and say, “Do not worry about it. Just be you. Do whatever feels good. Go ahead and live in that sin and do what feels good to you.” That is not love. That is hate.
Rick Green: That is loving yourself and being afraid to speak truth to someone. You do not love them more than you love yourself. You love yourself so much that you are willing to lie to them so they will like you. We speak truth, and we look for leaders who are willing to speak truth and not be deceptive or lie to people.
Rick Green: They must also hate covetousness. You need people in office who are not going to take a bribe. They are not going to sell out because they covet the job or the title, the applause of people, the money, or whatever it is they covet that they are willing to sell out the people they are supposed to represent.
Rick Green: Those four standards should be our guidebook, those four boxes we are looking to check. Nobody fulfills all four perfectly because they are human. Rarely do you find a candidate on the ballot who even rates highly in all four categories. You have to analyze the race, do the best you can, and look for the person who best fits those four things.
Rick Green: iVoterGuide is a great tool for doing that because they compile all the information in one place. I can dive as deeply as I want into each race, or, if I have not had time and it is time to vote, I can quickly look on my phone, iPad, laptop, or whatever and analyze those candidates.
Rick Green: I encourage you to use that tool. I encourage you not to be one of those Christians who sits out this election because you do not like the options. No matter who is on the ballot, the analysis I just gave you works. You decide which candidate best fits it.
Rick Green: You may be stuck in an area where the two candidates who meet the first standard, meaning they are able, have a chance of winning, and have the wherewithal to do the job, may both rate low on fearing God, being honest, and hating covetousness. Then you have to say, “If one of them is at 10 percent and the other candidate is at 15 percent, I am going to vote for the one at 15 percent,” because that five percent difference is going to matter in your life, neighborhood, community, state, and nation.
Rick Green: I have never been in a situation where two candidates were absolutely equal on those biblical requirements for someone in public office. There is always one who is better, whether slightly better or a lot better. Therefore, your vote matters. It makes a difference.
Rick Green: Sometimes people stay home and do not vote because they think their one vote is not going to matter. It does. And even if it did not, it would not change your duty. God does not say, “Joshua, be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid, neither be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go, but since it is not going to make a difference, never mind.”
Rick Green: Even if you were going to lose the battle and things were not going to go your way, you still do your duty. You still are strong and of good courage. You still go in and vote, and you still do the best you can with what you have, where you are.
Rick Green: I would argue that it does make a difference. We are living at a time when every single vote matters. We are significantly split in this country, which makes your vote that much more important.
Rick Green: When you are talking about Congress right now, both chambers, the House and the Senate, are separated by just a handful of votes between Republicans and Democrats. If you do not think there is a difference between the parties, you are not paying attention.
Rick Green: Friends of mine in Omaha at Lord of Hosts Church put out an incredible guide that says you have to recognize there is a difference between the two parties. Do not buy the line that there is no difference, that it is a uniparty in Washington, D.C. There are people in Washington from both parties who are part of a uniparty and are just concerned about themselves. But the parties themselves, and who is going to be speaker or majority leader, matter greatly.
Rick Green: There is a huge difference in the type of policies that are going to be passed and the impact the government is going to have on your life and my life, depending on which party h
Host: In form, religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith and live out their convictions, no matter where they are.
Host: Sacred Honor is the courage to speak truth and live out your free speech.
Host: We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
Rick Green: Welcome to At the Core. It was Walker Wildmon and Rick Green. I'm Rick Green. Thanks for joining me today.
Rick Green: I was listening to that little spot on iVoterGuide as we were heading into the program. Before I jump into the topics I wanted to cover today, I just want to reiterate iVoterGuide.com. The election is here. Early voting is already starting in a few of the key states, and it will be pretty much everywhere by next week. We are down to just a couple of weeks here.
Rick Green: This is the time to go to iVoterGuide.com, not only for yourself, but for the people in your life. Most people have no idea who they are going to vote for. We kind of live, breathe, and eat it around here, so obviously our minds are made up fairly early. But most people out there are just now starting to pay attention to the elections, and maybe not at all.
Rick Green: You can be the catalyst. You can be the one to get it on their radar and get them the information they need to vote confidently, not just go in and vote for a name they recognize without knowing anything about that person, or vote just by guessing. You can actually go in confident that you are voting for the best candidate possible in each race. Notice I said the best candidate possible, not the perfect person, because that one does not exist, at least not on the ballot. You have to do the best you can with what you have, where you are, and iVoterGuide helps you do that in an informed way.
Rick Green: iVoterGuide is very easy to use. I'm a hyper-visual guy. I like colored Post-it notes around the desk, and I like to be able to see things in color. iVoterGuide does that. You can even see a dial, basically, on the candidates. Do they lean conservative or liberal? Are they very conservative or very liberal? Are they off the charts weird, like Talafrico in Texas? No, they do not actually have that part on the dial. I would add that to the dial just for this Texas U.S. Senate race. But the point is, it is an easy tool to use.
Rick Green: What I love about it is that I go back 27 years to helping Richard Ford start this thing back in Texas, beginning to comb through the votes, rate candidates, and look deeply. Do not just look at what they say they are for or against, but look at how they actually voted. What do they actually do?
Rick Green: If you have a candidate who has not been in office and does not have a voting record, you have to dig deeper. You have to look at how they have voted with their dollars. In other words, who have they given money to and supported in the past? All of that information matters, and it helps you get the full picture of what a candidate might do in office.
Rick Green: It is not a guarantee. You end up with some people who do not do in office what we thought they were going to do. Take John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. I would never have thought that he would be making as much sense as he does today and advocating for Republicans, even as a Democratic U.S. senator, because he is tired of the insanity of the Democratic Socialists of America and the other people in the Democratic Party.
Rick Green: I would not have guessed that he would have taken some of the positions he has taken over the last couple of years based on his track record and how I would have analyzed him as a candidate. There are outliers, and there are people who do not end up doing in office what we thought they were going to do. So again, you do the best you can with what you have, where you are, with all the information you can possibly get. I just think iVoterGuide does it better than anyone.
Rick Green: I love the way they gather all that information from all those different sources, plug it in, analyze it, and then rate those candidates. You can dive into all the information available there, but if you do not have time to do that, you can quickly go down the list and look at all the candidates who will be on your ballot and make your decision.
Rick Green: iVoterGuide does not tell you how to vote. They just give you the information. If you consider yourself to be ultra-liberal, you can vote for the candidates who line up with that. If you consider yourself to be a conservative, a patriot, a constitutionalist, and a Christian, then obviously you are going to vote for the ones whose ratings line up that way.
Rick Green: Sometimes in some of these races, there is not a huge difference between the candidates, but there is enough of a difference that you still need to vote for the one who most closely lines up. I think you should vote for the one who most closely lines up with biblical values. That is the guiding principle. That is the plumb line. That is what you measure everything against.
Rick Green: It is not whether they are from a particular race, religion, or area. Are they biblical? Which candidate is most biblical?
Rick Green: Today, in terminology that fits the boxes everybody checks, that is typically going to be conservative. That is going to be the more biblical candidate. In the old days, liberal would have meant the more freedom-loving person. That word was used that way. That is why my friend Dr. Everett Piper had the book Why I'm a Liberal and Other Conservative Ideas.
Rick Green: Under the old definition of the term liberal, it is not what we think of today. Today, you are considered liberal if you are for transgender transitions for children, against parental rights, for more and more government, and believe that government is smarter than the people and should tell us what to do in every situation. Those are what we would consider liberal positions.
Rick Green: Words mean things, and sometimes definitions change over time in a culture. Today, you would have to acknowledge that if a candidate appears to be conservative, that is more than likely the more biblical and constitutional position. If they are more liberal under today's terminology, they typically are not going to care what the Bible says, or they are going to misconstrue the Bible.
Rick Green: You might have someone like Talafrico in Texas who takes Bible verses and absolutely warps them. You talk about adding to the Word of God and subtracting from the Word of God, and the millstone being tied around your neck. This guy is an absolute heretic. There is so much evidence to that effect.
Rick Green: That takes me to one of the topics I was going to get to later in the program, but I think it fits right here. If you call yourself a Christian, that means you are a follower of Christ, a disciple of Christ. Therefore, the Bible is your instruction manual for life. It should be your guide on what is right and wrong and how you should live your life.
Rick Green: If you are a Christian, the things in the Bible that are right or wrong should be right or wrong in your life as well. If I am a disciple and follower of Christ, then I have to follow the commands. I get to follow the commands. It actually produces a better life, so I would be wise to do that.
Rick Green: If I am a follower of Christ and I believe in the Great Commission, then I am going to make disciples and teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded. He had a lot to say about how we treat our neighbors, what is right and wrong, and the right and wrong way to do things. The guidance is all there if we are willing to dive in and measure our candidates based on it.
Rick Green: There is a wonderful Scripture in Exodus that summarizes this. It says you should choose out from among you leaders of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. That is local, county, state, and federal government. The types of people you should choose should be able men who fear God, men of truth, and hate covetousness.
Rick Green: That is a great guide for us, almost a checklist. Are they capable of doing the job? Are they capable of getting elected? Are they capable of governing well? Do they have the skill set and the wherewithal to lead?
Rick Green: Do they fear God? Do they acknowledge that there is a Creator who is not just some intelligent design somewhere in the sky, but who is actively raising up and tearing down, judging, and measuring all of those things?
Rick Green: We fear God not out of a spirit of fear that is afraid to do things, but with awe and respect. There is a weight, a kavod, to the way we view God. Because of that, we want to follow God and follow His commands.
Rick Green: They are able, they fear God, and they are men of truth. They are willing to speak truth regardless of how popular it is and regardless of whether it makes people happy or sad. They are willing to speak truth.
Rick Green: We often say, “Speak truth in love.” My pastor, Jimmy Pruitt, says, “We speak the truth because of love.” I think that is a great way to describe it. We speak truth because we love people. We do not want to lie to them and say, “Do not worry about it. Just be you. Do whatever feels good. Go ahead and live in that sin and do what feels good to you.” That is not love. That is hate.
Rick Green: That is loving yourself and being afraid to speak truth to someone. You do not love them more than you love yourself. You love yourself so much that you are willing to lie to them so they will like you. We speak truth, and we look for leaders who are willing to speak truth and not be deceptive or lie to people.
Rick Green: They must also hate covetousness. You need people in office who are not going to take a bribe. They are not going to sell out because they covet the job or the title, the applause of people, the money, or whatever it is they covet that they are willing to sell out the people they are supposed to represent.
Rick Green: Those four standards should be our guidebook, those four boxes we are looking to check. Nobody fulfills all four perfectly because they are human. Rarely do you find a candidate on the ballot who even rates highly in all four categories. You have to analyze the race, do the best you can, and look for the person who best fits those four things.
Rick Green: iVoterGuide is a great tool for doing that because they compile all the information in one place. I can dive as deeply as I want into each race, or, if I have not had time and it is time to vote, I can quickly look on my phone, iPad, laptop, or whatever and analyze those candidates.
Rick Green: I encourage you to use that tool. I encourage you not to be one of those Christians who sits out this election because you do not like the options. No matter who is on the ballot, the analysis I just gave you works. You decide which candidate best fits it.
Rick Green: You may be stuck in an area where the two candidates who meet the first standard, meaning they are able, have a chance of winning, and have the wherewithal to do the job, may both rate low on fearing God, being honest, and hating covetousness. Then you have to say, “If one of them is at 10 percent and the other candidate is at 15 percent, I am going to vote for the one at 15 percent,” because that five percent difference is going to matter in your life, neighborhood, community, state, and nation.
Rick Green: I have never been in a situation where two candidates were absolutely equal on those biblical requirements for someone in public office. There is always one who is better, whether slightly better or a lot better. Therefore, your vote matters. It makes a difference.
Rick Green: Sometimes people stay home and do not vote because they think their one vote is not going to matter. It does. And even if it did not, it would not change your duty. God does not say, “Joshua, be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid, neither be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go, but since it is not going to make a difference, never mind.”
Rick Green: Even if you were going to lose the battle and things were not going to go your way, you still do your duty. You still are strong and of good courage. You still go in and vote, and you still do the best you can with what you have, where you are.
Rick Green: I would argue that it does make a difference. We are living at a time when every single vote matters. We are significantly split in this country, which makes your vote that much more important.
Rick Green: When you are talking about Congress right now, both chambers, the House and the Senate, are separated by just a handful of votes between Republicans and Democrats. If you do not think there is a difference between the parties, you are not paying attention.
Rick Green: Friends of mine in Omaha at Lord of Hosts Church put out an incredible guide that says you have to recognize there is a difference between the two parties. Do not buy the line that there is no difference, that it is a uniparty in Washington, D.C. There are people in Washington from both parties who are part of a uniparty and are just concerned about themselves. But the parties themselves, and who is going to be speaker or majority leader, matter greatly.
Rick Green: There is a huge difference in the type of policies that are going to be passed and the impact the government is going to have on your life and my life, depending on which party h
