Insider & Outsider Status. AKA: How to Trick a Feminist

[0:00] Welcome to the Providence Podcast.

[0:11] My name is Chris Oswald, Senior Pastor at Providence Community Church. What a great church. What a wonderful church Providence Community Church is.

[0:23] Today's episode is going to be an observe the squirrel brain of Chris's consciousness kind of episode.

[0:36] I have a bunch of things to talk about. Maybe you'll find some of them interesting. Maybe you won't, but let me go ahead and get into just a number of things that have been sort of floating around in my brain as I've done various kinds of meetings and conversations and so on and so forth.

[0:56] And in no particular order, one of the things I thought we might talk about today is this idea of in-group and out-group status. In-group and out-group status.

[1:07] This idea that you are both a part of a majority community and a part of a minority community. You have things that belong in the realm of order.

[1:22] And you have things that belong in the realm of chaos intruding upon order. You are partly an insider and partly an outsider. You're partly in the majority in some ways and the minority in other ways.

[1:34] And God has carefully designed the world so that typically in the majority of history we have both things to preserve and conserve and have some kind of essential part of conservatism, however that might get labeled, and also some part of disquietude, of a desire for things to change, a place in which we are oppressed or on the outside looking in and so on and so forth.

[2:08] And so practically speaking, this is sort of like, you know, gosh, I mean, let's just use me as an example. We use me as the punching bag here. What are some in-group statuses that I enjoy?

[2:21] First of all, this passport, right, the citizenship in the United States of America makes me an elite among elites in terms of my sort of in-group status in the whole world.

[2:34] As an American citizen, I am universally, by almost the entire world, coveted. You know, people want this thing that I was born with and did not earn.

[2:49] And I can travel all over the world and see this and have done so. So that's one piece of my in-group status. Another one is I'm a large human being.

[3:00] That's not my choice. That was genetically given to me. That's a thing that was dealt to me. I didn't pick it, but it does matter to some degree.

[3:11] What else? I mean, you know, I'm white. You know, lots of things. Like there's lots of things that involve some level of in-group status. The biggest one being that I am a citizen of a country that is sort of universally, no matter what they say, considered to be sort of the country.

[3:34] The country, I've stood in many lines throughout many airports with many people from all over the world and seen all the different colored passports that folks have in their hands and know for a fact that all of them would trade their passports for my passport.

[3:48] So that's an idea of in-group. And when I'm in-group, I have this sort of natural desire to preserve, protect, care. When I recognize my in-group status in some area, when I recognize the blessing that I received, I have some sort of motivation to maintain it, to hold it, to protect it, and so on and so forth.

[4:09] But there are also areas where I'm an out-group, where I have out-group status. I'm a Christian. You know, I have a particular – I come from a particular socioeconomic status.

[4:22] I come from a particular educational status and so on and so forth. And so in other areas, I have out-group status. I'm sort of on the outside looking in of the sort of cultural capital that is sort of, you know, established at any given time.

[4:37] So in some respects, I have reasons to conserve. In other respects, I have reasons to revolt. And this is really how human beings are supposed to live. This is a genuine sort of feature of civilization and not a bug.

[4:52] When we can give people an identity in both ways, they see that which they should be thankful for and that which they are understandably, at least in their own perception, dissatisfied with and want to change.

[5:06] And what happens when you sort of motivate people to locate all of their identity in their out-group statuses? What happens when you encourage people to incentivize people to center all of their identity in those places in which they are the victim?

[5:25] Well, what you get is a full-blood revolutionary with nothing left to lose. And so what you're going to wind up with in a culture like that is people that they still have these in-group statuses.

[5:36] They still have these blessings. But what you'll wind up with is people who have been trained to renounce those blessings as any part of their fundamental identity and instead embrace all the things that are, you know, sort of typical of victimhood.

[5:51] And what you'll wind up with is a group of revolutionaries who, before they realize what they've even done, will burn down their own houses. So you need to be watching out for that, not only politically and nationally, but just like spiritually and in your own life.

[6:05] Do you have things that are happening to you that are unfair, that are unjust, that are difficult, so on and so forth? Of course you do. You're a human being. We live in an unjust, you know, in a functionally sort of seemingly unjust world.

[6:17] We certainly live in a world that doesn't seem fair. And so you will at any given time have something that could be sort of representative of your out-group status, of your minority status.

[6:29] And then you will also have things that are representative of your privilege. And in both of these things, you need to honor God. You need to trust God.

[6:39] And what feminism has done in particular, I mean, amongst many other things, is feminism has encouraged a bunch of women to identify only that which is representative of their out-group and, you know, minority status.

[6:52] Meanwhile, you know, a good 80% of their entire lives is located within the in-group, privileged status. And they're tricked, you know, they're tricked into burning down their whole stinking identity and house and country and everything simply because they have been sort of catechized to live a life of aggrievement and bitterness rather than understand that, you know, yeah, you've got some disadvantages.

[7:20] Yeah, you're being treated unfairly in certain ways. You also have a ton of advantages. And this is just the way that life works. We all get these cards dealt to us. Some of them are better than others and so on and so forth.

[7:32] Rather than that, they're taught almost as a matter of fashion. Think of wormwood and screw tape to embrace the fashion of aggrievement, the fashion of victimhood.

[7:43] And it really winds up just causing people to be zealously revolutionary without any mind to what might be burned of their own if they decided to burn the whole town down.

[7:54] And, you know, the reason I'm thinking about this is because of thinking about the French Revolution, which is essentially the satanic version of the American Revolution.

[8:05] I would say that that's actually really, really true. It's like the satanic version of the American Revolution. It's the satanic counterfeit of the American Revolution.

[8:15] And really what you had there was a group of people who did not recognize the massive spiritual and cultural inheritance they had received from the people that they rightly or wrongly deemed to be corrupt and from the tradition that sort of ensconced or permanentized that particular tradition.

[8:38] And so they were sort of tricked into selling their birthright. And that's where I'm kind of landing on this is, you know, you get to this passage in Ephesians where Esau said to have sold his birthright and afterward could not find tears for repentance.

[8:53] And I think the idea there is like he literally couldn't repent anymore because that season had passed. The thing was already done. And what had happened there is, is he was tricked into overly identifying with his outgroup status.

[9:09] His outgroup status was a guy who had a bad hunting trip and, you know, for whom fortune did not fall favorably. And he wound up being in a position where he was hungry and maybe had been hungry for a number of days.

[9:24] And because he over-identified with his outgroup status, he undervalued his in-group privileges and as such wound up selling his birthright. I think that that's just like a massive kind of lesson to apply to all of life.

[9:41] And it certainly is a anecdote to feminism in particular. It's also an anecdote to just really anything related to critical race theory and so forth. But I suspect it goes much further than that.

[9:53] You know, I mean, there have been times when I've been treated really unfairly. And the thing is, is like if I'm not careful and I don't like counterbalance this unfair treatment in the negative with all the unfair treatment God has given me in the positive, I'm going to sell out fundamentally good things in my life just because I've overly identified with the revolutionary.

[10:17] And so I think that's like just a pretty broad brush kind of category to think through is like we each have, well, all of reality is sort of defined by the interplay between the known and the unknown or the accomplished and the yet to be accomplished and order and chaos.

[10:38] And, you know, in mythological terms, this is often represented as male and female, masculine and feminine. But in general, like that's just all of life. It's what we have and then what we don't have.

[10:52] It's what is known and what is unknown, what is dark and what is light and so on and so forth. And like you will wind up being tricked as Eve was tricked if you don't sort of properly evaluate that which you have been given against that which you have not been given or that which has been withheld from you.

[11:12] So I think in general, God has designed us to live in both places, to have one foot in the in group and one foot in the out group. And that sort of teaches us to always sort of question things while simultaneously being respectful of what we have and what he's given us.

[11:33] And so we wind up with a sort of environment of both imagination without it turning into devilish, you know, what's the word?

[11:43] Presumption, you know, a devilish presumption. Like I literally am discounting all that I've been given with an eye toward one thing I have been not given, so forth.

[11:56] So, yeah, I think it's sort of like disquietude is the out group position and gratitude is the in group position. And we are supposed to live all the way till we get delivered from original sin in eternity.

[12:07] We're supposed to live with both of those feelings, both gratitude and disquietude. And if we ever get tricked in one or the other, we become really, you know, hellish.

[12:18] Which, I mean, I didn't talk about it, but because I think it's not super culturally hot right now, but everything I'm talking about could be expressed in the other, where a person becomes overly guarded or careful about that which he already has been given so that he's unwilling to risk anything to take to, you know, accomplish that which has not yet been accomplished.

[12:48] So I've been talking about someone who's sort of their whole identity has been centered on their out group status, but you could take the same thing and say like, well, there's people who could be overly centered on their in group status.

[12:59] And this would be sort of, you know, I suppose, like Gollum, where it's just all about hoarding the thing. Or, you know, the rich young ruler who went away sad because he had great possessions.

[13:12] So in that particular story, he knows that he's outside of the kingdom. He says to Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? But he's highly conscious of his insider status as a possessor of great possessions.

[13:27] And so he over identifies with what he has and under identifies with what he doesn't have. And, you know, you wind up with a problem there as well. So it just seems to me that we've been created to be people of both gratitude and lamentation.

[13:46] The gratitude keeps us from burning everything down that he has given us. And that lamentation keeps us from being overly satisfied with what we have. So that we would, if we were overly satisfied with what we have, we would cut off all kind of yearning for new and more and so on and so forth.

[14:05] So that's in, maybe I guess you could say, like the first article of this magazine I would entitle, The Squirrel Brain of Chris, is just this idea of like, we need to figure out how to consistently identify with both insider and outsider status.

[14:22] And if you ever find someone who's making a particular play for you to get identified in one or the other, it's probably kind of like a spiritual psyop. I'm not quite done talking about this.

[14:35] One last thing on this is, you know, the move now on the reactionary right is to identify with sort of heritage Americans and sort of, you know, remind Americans like me that we have a unique birthright in this country and that that's worth protecting and so on and so forth.

[14:55] And I would say absolutely that's true. I was pleasantly surprised with J.D. Vance's speech where he mentioned that America is not merely a proposition, but it is also a people. And that's, he's encoding a bunch of political thought there.

[15:11] And I was surprised that he did that. So I don't love Vance. I think he's, mostly I don't think he's a very skilled politician. I think he's a bit of a charisma sinkhole, for lack of a better term.

[15:28] But one thing I did appreciate was his recognition of this broader idea that was sort of like teaching Americans to be grateful for their past and their rootedness in the country.

[15:40] I think that's a good thing. But what you'll wind up with if you don't, if you're not careful, is you'll wind up with people who are very foolishly kind of protecting that which they have without sort of understanding that what they have is incomplete and needs to be added to.

[15:58] That's not really an argument for immigration. I don't really have an argument for immigration. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm simply talking about the idea of over-identifying with one or the other.

[16:10] Okay. Okay.