Does the Shape of the Christian Story Impoverish Christian Rulers?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]I can't even let myself be uh uh be the subversive force.

[00:00:06]After talking about this, that's just it's so much easier. And now I have to think about um gosh.

[00:00:13]I'm even racking my brain to think about like I don't know.

[00:00:17]There's this weird dynamic too of um like Tolkien in in Return of the King in this image of like the glorious king coming back and you know bringing proper rule and the the critique that George R.R. Martin brings to that saying um pretty famously he has a quote saying uh he didn't like it because he wanted to know the tax policy that Aragorn brought.

[00:00:40]That somehow the story was incomplete because it it didn't have the specifics on how he did that.

[00:00:48]Um and part of that's just cuz you know, again, we're missing it. Like we don't we don't know. We know that's the right story, but Yeah. how's it play out?

[00:00:58]Well, I think that's a I got to be careful about how I say this.

[00:01:04]That's an element of the Christian narrative.

[00:01:09]That we don't know how to live within the consummation.

[00:01:13]We're always sort of leaning in towards the consummation. And so with Aragorn's coronation "Now begins the days of the king."

[00:01:23]Gandalf says in the movie.

[00:01:25]And and Martin has a point.

[00:01:30]Where he says, "Okay.

[00:01:32]How is the how how is the kingdom how does the kingdom not how does the kingdom come because that's still leaning into it, but what does it mean to live in the kingdom? Because the whole movie and the whole story is between a lost kingdoms. Oh, the elves used to be great and we're we're walking through ruins. And and And Aragorn he's going to ascend and becomes the king, and then the story stops. I mean, it's it's almost uh you know, it's almost a romance story where the man and the woman find each other, and then then they marry, and they live happily >> ever after. That's right. And and anybody who's been married knows well, that's kind of the easy part.

[00:02:19]There's a reason you call it a honeymoon. Now, suddenly, you're going to have to um get a job and find a more mortgage, and the um massive projection you've been doing on your idealized partner is beginning to wear down, and you're actually seeing each other for who you really are, and the real negotiation negotiation of marriage begins, and you know, so so that's a you know, that's a that's a that's a fair question by Martin, but it's a question that Christians have to live with because the whole narrative arc of our story is like that. The Book of Revelation you've got blood you've got enemies dying, you've got Jesus coming with a white horse, you've got angels singing, you've got the New Jerusalem descending as a bride from heaven, and cut.

[00:03:15]And then you've got John Vervaeke sort of like George Martin saying, "I don't know if I'd want to live forever.

[00:03:23]Won't I get bored?"

[00:03:26]And then you basically got a question of faith that has to ask can you trust that in the next dispensation God has good things in store?

[00:03:46]You know, it's sort of asking the fetus to trust mom and dad that it's worth coming out of the womb.

[00:03:53]What does the fetus know about life out here?

[00:03:58]Despite Neil, I can quote the the gospel and uh Jesus talks about, you know, what what parent when they get asked for an egg will give a snake?

[00:04:09]The sense in which like trusting in the character of of God and saying, you know, like if he gives eternal life, then eternal life is probably good, however it plays out.

[00:04:22]Um