Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the parish circuit. We are about bringing truth, goodness, and beauty to Acadiana, to all of Louisiana, and to all of our listening audience. Thank you all so much for joining us for another episode. I am Stuart Amidon, pastor of Christchurch Opelousis. Today I am joined by David Riley, who also serves as an elder at Christchurch Opelousis. Welcome to the show. Dave. Hello. Is this your first episode ever?
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Yeah, this is my first time on any podcast ever.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Holy smokes. It's happening right now in front of our very eyes. Okay. This is wonderful. My day just got so much better. And also joining us today, I think, for the first time, too, is my old friend Jonathan Dupuis. Jonathan, welcome.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: This is nice.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: That's the whiskey talking.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: The room is smaller than I thought.
There's not a massive crowd.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: There's no audience.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: No, they're here. That's right. And the room's very large and the equipment's fancy, and we're in a nice.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Oh, it is fancy.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Don't ruin the. The listeners vibes right now. No, that's leather.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: There's leather. Plush leather chairs.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: That's right. We're basically in a closet if we're just being completely honest. It's the closet next to the bathroom.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: This is.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Put the microphones in there. Jonathan and I go way back, way back in the day, and I'm glad that you're here today. We're talking about something fun. We were talking about it earlier this week, and we decided to make an episode on it. Ladies and gentlemen, we have big news.
There are people who are trying to get cockfighting back in St. Landry Parish.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Amen.
I mean, Nate.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: I mean, quit that.
[00:01:30] Speaker C: This is.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: This was. I don't remember how I even found this. I think I was just, like, scrolling through the Internet or something like that. And up pops this dude.
Okay, so this. Here's. Here's the gist of the story. So this guy went to. This is from Saint Landright now, which is a local media reporting group. Stlandreynow.com is where we're getting this information from.
A fellow went to. His name is James Demerel. He went to the St Landry Parish Council meeting this past time, and he was advocating for them to reestablish cockfighting in our area. That's what he was fighting for. He was saying, hey, guys, and if you don't know what cockfighting is, maybe we should explain. Define terms. Before we get into this cockfighting, let's.
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Let the person with some experience in the industry.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Is that you?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: It's like anyone who explains this is going to seem they have a past.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Okay, so I should. I've never been to a fight. Have you guys ever been to one before? I think David went to a fighting arena one time. Right.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: But it's been repurposed to a human wrestling.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yes, a human fighting.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: The fake kind of human wrestling.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: I mean. Yeah. That's dumb.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: So. So this guy. Okay, so cockfighting. What is cockfighting? Cockfighting is you breed fighting roosters to kill each other and you place pets on it. Yeah, okay. That's the gist. And like, in some instances, and I don't know if this is in all instances, but in some instances they put, like, metal.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Knives on their feet to.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: I don't know, to slash. To slash the throats and the stomachs.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Up of the other chickens.
[00:03:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: It's like, wow.
[00:03:12] Speaker C: It's like good times, I'm sure. But goodness gracious.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Well, so, like, I saw this and I immediately started laughing, but David apparently has done some legwork.
So this. In St. Landry parish, there's apparently a pretty strong history of this.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yes, yes. So in Sunset, Louisiana, which is like.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: 15 minutes from here.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Right. There's a. The venue I was referencing earlier was the cockfighting capital of the nation.
Was the cockfighting capital of the nation, Sunset, Louisiana. Yep.
Well, 2008 was when that law we were talking about earlier went into effect to ban Louisiana in 2008 became the last state of the 50 to ban.
That actually happens a lot, doesn't it?
Last state to move the drinking age.
We're not number 50 in education anymore.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Oh, it's Mississippi. Yeah.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: But anyway. But we were the last state to ban cockfighting, and it went into effect in 2008.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah, 2008. So to answer your question, I graduated college in 2008.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Right, right, right. I think so. Previous to that, Sunset was like the place to be. And apparently hundreds of people, thousands of people would come to some particular, you know, big cockfighting festivals. Events from around the nation to Sunset. To Sunset.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: Wow. Okay, so we missed it.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: The venue that you went to is now a. It's. Well, actually, no, it's for sale now, but at one point it was repurposed into, like, a media and performance venue.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: And I remember being walked around whenever it first reopened, and they would take you to the outbuildings and say, oh, this is where they put the winning roosters. And I was like, What? And they were like, yeah, no, this is.
They would put them in there, and they got the good treatment. Like, there's air conditioning. Oh, my goodness. Like, it was crazy, man. Had these outbuildings that they would put them up in. It was. It was built for something profound. And that's actually. So in the article, the guy, James Demerell, he references, he says that every hotel in Opelousas, when they would have a cockfighting event, would be sold.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Would be full.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Would be sold for all these guys to come in, like, okay. And so David and I, we were joking a little bit about this beforehand because, I mean, it's either laugh or cry, so we're gonna pick the laugh.
But how long ago was cockfighting banned in Ireland?
[00:05:46] Speaker B: So when I looked it up, it was 200 years ago.
Now, as we all.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: 200 years ago.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: As we all know, the banning of something legally does not mean that people stop immediately. Stop.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: That's fair. That's a fair point.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: It's still popular in Ireland, and I think it's still popular in St. Laury Par.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Definitely still popular here. No. Okay, so if you drive on the back roads of St. Landry Parish, like between Eunice and Crowley or out towards Port Barry or around Ville Plat, if you drive out there long enough, go pick you some back roads, and you will look off the road and there will be this, you know, house, and behind it is all these little tiny A frames. And you'll ask yourself, you'll say, man, what are all those little tiny doghouses doing back there? Why are there. Why are they spread out? Why are they spread out? Why are there 40 of them?
[00:06:45] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: It's because that's for cockfighting. They're breeding the roosters to go and do this. Like, I imagine there's some type of training involved. So it's definitely still happening. And this guy, him showing up and saying, hey, guys, let's make it legal. I'm sure the subtext of that is, hey, guys, I just don't want to worry about getting in trouble anymore.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Please accept us for who we are.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: It's like a boiling pot, and you finally get some bubbles coming over through the lid. So there's a lot going on.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: That's right. He's just. He's just now feeling like I could talk about it.
[00:07:20] Speaker C: I think he lost the bet.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Somebody's got to go ask. Well, it says in the article on, say later now, it says a group supporting cockfight.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: I said there were, like, a lot.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Of people with him. He didn't show up by himself. Like, he went with his buddies to go and try to get this done. And this is like, okay, so we're Christians, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do through this podcast is impart Christian truth to the world, encourage the world around us to follow Christ, obey him, repent, believe the gospel.
The gist is like, you can't do this to animals.
There's a moral problem here. Right.
So, Jonathan, you and I were talking about this where the text that we were referencing, what was it? Was it Proverbs?
[00:08:06] Speaker C: Yeah. So Proverbs 12:10 and Deuteronomy 25:4. But in Proverbs is probably a more straightforward one. In the. The niv. I'm all for the. I'm just for any Bible. So it says verse 10 says, the righteousness, the righteous care for the needs of their animals. But the kindness.
I'm going to read with some Hooked on Phonics sponsorship.
Kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.
And then it says in Deuteronomy 25:4, do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out grain.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: The general rule of Proverbs 12 is you are going to be. Your character is known by the way you treat your animals.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Right, Right. Because nobody cares. That's your least common denominator from you treat animals.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: And if you're kicking the dog and you're not feet, you have your dog chained to a tree, you know, all winter long.
That's who you are.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Right, Right. That's a sign of your character. Yeah, I have that conversation. You know, my.
My kids are kids, and so they are always like, dad, we can get another cat.
You know, like, your kids aren't old enough for this yet.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yalls.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Kids aren't old enough for this yet. But when you go to the pet store, the inevitable conversation that you'll have is, hey, dad, they got cats. And I'm like, and we have one.
We're good. But they see the little kittens in the corner and they say, but we could have two.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: We could have more than one. Dad, we can get some other animals. We could do something. And the gist is like, you have to take care of it. Yeah, this is. And taking care of it implies that you don't put it in a room and make it kill others.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: At the least.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: General rule. And we should talk about that, too, because. So we live in Saint Ledger Parish. Appaloosas. We're joking about. Well, we're making fun of Cockfighting right now. But there's also a lot of dog fighting that happens here still. Like, that's very prevalent, actually.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: Have someone very close to me who tells stories.
[00:10:03] Speaker A: Be careful.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: Who's telling me some stories about some locations very close to me in certain. Certain situations where they would fight these dogs. And I thought dog fighting was two big dogs going at it and grabbing each other's throat and being mean. Apparently what happens is they dismember each other.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Are you serious?
[00:10:24] Speaker C: Sorry, parents. You may want to pull your kids away.
It's actually extremely gruesome and bloody and terrible. And then you get.
I guess you got to shoot the other dog once it's done because it's torn to pieces.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So. So, so good times.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So not. This is. Okay, so we're not just. We're not just talking about something that could be a bad idea. Like, we're talking about the butchering of animals. And. And that's not a kindness, you know, like. Okay, so if we're gonna live like Christians, part of that means the way that we steward the things around us. Whenever God created everything, he put us over the animals. And that doesn't. Doesn't mean just to subjugate. That actually means to see that they thrive and flourish and that they live a good life. And if you understand that in Christian terms, it's a really easy conclusion to draw to say, you know what?
Maybe we shouldn't make them kill each other for sport. Right.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: It's a good starting place.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Right?
But it's interesting to me, so. Because St Andrew Parish is very, very heavily Catholic, it's interesting to me that it took until 2008 for this law to be passed, you know what I'm saying, for us to say no more of this.
What's that about?
How did the Roman Catholic Church let something like this last so long?
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Well, a friend of mine once told me a story, okay. In good old Ville Platte, Louisiana, you know, a sweet old woman who'd been going to the Catholic Church her whole life.
He made a joke helping her install a light bulb in her house. He said, you know, let there be light.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: She didn't get it.
She didn't get the joke.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah. She'd never read Genesis 1, verse 1.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: For real?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know, so. And I'm not.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: She didn't know. And she'd been going to Catholic church.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah. She didn't get the reference now. And I don't. You know, we got some. Some Great Catholic friends. This could be the case for, you know, any. Any nominal.
[00:12:17] Speaker C: And we have Protestants who would do the exact same thing.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Let there be light.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: So I think there's a disconnect between the word and its application for many people.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: I'd agree with that premise. I also.
So Roman Catholicism in its approach to culture is typically more of an absorption and transformative approach rather than a reformational Protestant, stop this. Do this type approach.
And you can see that with the ways that Mardi Gras has kind of been inculcated in different areas and not opposed to Mardi Gras. I love King Cakes, and I think that parades are fine, but the origins of it can be questionable, depending on which historical bit you're looking at. And some of the traditions that come along with it can also have issues. And this is not just a unique to South Louisiana kind of thing. This can be a application of the Roman Catholic Church moving into different areas too. So I wonder if it would be something along those lines as well. Would it be more of a, hey, we're here.
We don't really need to deal with this right now. We'll just let it ride and then see what comes next.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Sure. I was gonna say they are. He does the appeals for cockfighting. One was economic.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: That was hilarious.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah. One was economic.
And one of the parish council members made sure he asked how much we talked about.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: That was an amazing moment. Okay, okay.
[00:13:39] Speaker C: Let's not get too ball here.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: But I was gonna say the second.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Thing they're appealing to is culture.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: They're saying, this is creole culture. This is Cajun culture.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: This is interesting.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: This is, you know, whatever. This is part of our culture. But I think as Christians, we need to say, well, there is an objective standard for truth and goodness, and there can be aspects of culture that are bad.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: So.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: So don't do that.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Right. Like, my Scandinavian relatives on my mom's side still eat lutefisk for Christmas. If you don't know that it's dehydrated fish that's been rehydrated with lye, and it takes on a gelatinous texture and tastes exactly how you would think. And so we should be able to say, this is an objectively bad part of the culture, and you should stop eating lutefisk. No, there's no need for it.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: Crisis risen.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Right, right, right. When the British Empire showed up in India and they were burning wives, they said, no more.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: You don't get to do that.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Murder.
And we shouldn't be fighting.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's an easy conclusion.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Very good.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah. But I wonder.
So, yeah, one of the council members says the Saint Legion prayers now article says that it's. Timothy Lejeune says, how.
Provide me an estimate on how much revenue fighting can provide.
[00:15:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Not that we're about to rule on.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: It, but whenever we're talking about money, how much money are we really talking about? And this. That actually just in and of itself brings up its own problem.
Like, if what we're really looking at here is what is the basis for our moral decisions? Okay. And if it is the approval of the masses, we have a problem. Because the approval of the masses, like, because one of the arguments that he makes here is, think about all these hotels being filled out. Look at all the people. Like, if you show up to try and get something approved by a council or by elected official, one of the things that you do is you try to show up on Mass. You try to get numbers involved. So the first problem is that we're appealing to the masses. We're saying, hey, we think this should be allowed because look at how many people want it to happen.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Pure democracy.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. And the issue with that is, well, if everybody decides that they want to kill you, are we still cool with it?
[00:15:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: You know, and obviously the answer to that is, well, no. Okay, well, then based on what? Based on a higher authority somewhere else, not the consensus of the people. But then also, we appeal to money. We say, well, we got to be. We got to be realists here, guys. You ever heard this argument before? We got to. We got to be practical. We got to be real people. And this makes money.
Right.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: And. And it does.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: It does make tons of Minnesota hitman. That's right. That's right.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Cocaine.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Cocaine's a great business.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Different story.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah, we're just trying to get money going here. I mean, are we going to reopen prostitution?
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Like.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. How far are we going to push this? We. I mean, we are in a parish now where the legal sale of marijuana is. Is happening around us right now. Yeah. That's already active. The illegal sale of it was going on for a long time before that point, but now it's illegal. We have a shop for it out on the highway. And so one of the things that we have to think through here is, so what is the authority that we appeal to? And the argument that we're trying to make is we are appealing to the Bible. We're saying, God set the world up to work in a certain way. And so we're going to say, all right, here's the Bible verse Proverbs 12. You are known by the way that you take care of your beasts. You're known by the way you care for your animals. And if you go out and decide that you want to make money by getting your animals to kill each other, that shows something about you. That's what the Bible says. And this is a theme that's traced throughout the Bible, not just with animals, but you're also qualified or disqualified for political office or to govern in the church based on the order of your household because that says something about you.
And we had this conversation a long time ago whenever we were talking about one of our elected officials who got busted having an affair. And we said they probably shouldn't be an elected official anymore. It was almost like the world said, what? These two things don't have anything to do with each other, but it's revealing about a person's character. It's revealing about who they are. And one of the things that the Bible says is, by the way you care for your beasts, you will be known. You will be known. And so I think that's a really easy conclusion for us to draw and to say to our elected officials, hey, guys, let's not be the parish known for this. Yeah. Let's not.
Let's instead say, let's be the parish known for what does God say? And let's try to do it that way.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And I even say the approach to take is to. Before the council or whoever would listen to this is. That is more of the encouraging side. Kind of what you were doing was saying like this. We're doing a great thing by holding the line as, as part of the Saint Landry Parish Council. And the reason, the reinforcement for that is this. To see in the scriptures where it talked about that the evil mistreat their animals, but the righteous attend to kind of recreate the Garden of Eden. We essentially.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: Pastor Kirk talked about this theme of reconciliation.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Pastor Kirk is the pastor at First Baptist, right? Yeah.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: And he was sharing how God's up to reconciling all things in Christ. You know, the, the. Your. I mean, if you want to be hippie about it, your health, they're all about that. But like your, Your marriage, your. Your children, they should all be experiencing little layers of the kingdom of God coming. Coming to fruition.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: And. And that's only going to last as long as you live. And it. The already not yet dynamic. Yes, yes, yes. But as a, As a godly and Christian parish, which, if you've been to a council, they have real prayers at the beginning of the. Of the meeting. This is so encouraging. These men and these women are these godly people.
And the reason why you're doing the right thing as council members is because it matches the character of God to keep putting in laws that keep re. Establishing God's design for things.
And lines up with the real clear text about, we treat our animals well. Our dogs have the best life any dog is going to have, you know.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:46] Speaker C: Under our reign in our homes.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: And it's the kingdom of darkness and the culture of death that would take it in the other direction. And to say, you know, how can I use this animal to the last little bit of its life.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:59] Speaker C: You just think in terms of Narnia.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: We're going in.
[00:20:04] Speaker C: Let's go.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: I'm rereading the books again.
[00:20:07] Speaker C: A cover for the Real Religion of Narnia. But anyway, if these animals were things with souls, how are we doing with that? Now, that's not biblical at all. But that just because I have kids and I listen to Narni all the.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Time, how would we treat and care for them?
[00:20:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Is this horse going to be yelling at me pretty soon? But anyway, I would say that the St Andrew Parish Council, they're doing a great job. And you are doing the Lord's work, literally, in this case, by holding. By holding the line. And there's your biblical.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Let's not do this.
This is a bad.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Let's move in a different direction.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: I will say, do we. Do we know what the reaction was of the parish council?
[00:20:46] Speaker A: So what they said here at the tail end of the article. So I was not at the council meeting. I'm going based solely off of the Saint Legrand now article. But based on the tail end of the article, it says that the chairman of the council, Jody White, said it's probably best if you guys go to the state rather than coming to us at the parish. Which sounds like they just deflected the ball to somebody else. It doesn't really sound like they're saying, we will not do this.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Not. Not here.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: And actually, to talk about the right order of appeal, they should start at a local level. So the cockfighters were moving in the right direction of a proper order of appeal.
Because.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: And they were. I'll say this. I wanted to interject this. They were specifically asking for help with this. They were. They were requesting that the parish attorney help them draft a letter to the State basically to request a special permission basically, to do this locally. So now, they did say that. That at some point they would be maybe requesting some license locally as well. But they were trying to kind of try to bring it back, recruit some. Some local authorities to help them in this mission of theirs. And it sounds like it did not succeed. So that's good. Amen.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Well, and there's also no caveat. Like, nobody is pretending that these animals aren't going to die.
He even says this. One of the advocates even said this. He says that the industry used to be huge. You make thousands of dollars a bird, or maybe you're just going to make a gumbo and watch them tear each other apart. Like they know exactly what they're setting themselves up for. They know what they're advocating for.
And what we're saying is no, thank you.
God says no to that.
[00:22:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Let's instead live a different way according to what God would set up in his particular standards. You know, it's interesting.
I got to go into the St Andrew parish district Attorney's office not too long ago, and they have a courtroom in there, which, I didn't realize this. They have like a. And I think it's for a grand jury situations, because that operates, I think, directly under the jurisdiction of the District attorney's office. But they have this big courtroom in there. And we walked into the courtroom, and up on the.
Up on the wall, the seal that is over where the. I guess the judge sits or the DA sits or somebody sits, I don't know. But the big bench right there in the middle, there's a seal on the wall up there, and it has the scales of justice. Right. Y' all know the scales of justice. And the scales of justice are sitting right on top of a book.
And I'm like, I know what book that is.
Do y' all know what book that is? Because I know what book that is. Like, and I don't know the origin of the seal or how long it's been there or anything like that. But even, like, the. The roots of Apelousis, like, if you go look at the city of Apelousis seal, there's crosses on it. There's loaves and fishes. The slogan for the whole city is Omnia adei glorium. All things to the glory of God. Like, we have this rich heritage.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Christian heritage. That's here.
That what we're saying is not new.
This is something that our generations past in this area would have not blinked an eye at. We're saying hey, let's believe the Bible. Generations past here would have said, yeah, of course. Now, generations past here also didn't quite have all their ducks in a row because they also had some cockfighting going.
[00:24:07] Speaker C: They're chickens. They didn't have their chickens in a row.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: My money.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: That's right.
But you see, like, that's. That's something that we have to remember. We're. We're not coming up with a new idea here by saying the words of God should be applied to all of life. That's not a new idea. That's something that historically has been enacted here that people have believed for quite some time. The difference is the modern mindset that's come in that says, no, we have to have this radical separation between faith and life.
And what I'm saying is, no, we don't. That's new.
That's not a historical truth. That's certainly not an orthodox Christian truth. And as a result of the thought that we're having or the mindset that has happened to us today, we've lost, and we've lost a lot of ground. And so my only proposal is, hey, guys, let's not have cockfighting because the Bible says.
That's all I'm saying today. Let's not have cockfighting because.
Because God says so. It's not that hard, huh?
[00:25:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: I mean, I'd also just throw in that even someone who claims to be secular is not coming at this issue neutrally.
Everybody brings their moral assumptions to law, into the public, public square. People get uncomfortable when you talk as a Christian or want to bring the Bible to bear.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: But everybody, Everybody brings their moral. Their moral authority, whatever that might be. Maybe it's just themselves, maybe it's just their. Whatever they're thinking that day.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: We think this is wrong. Yeah. Most of the time, the secularists that I've talked to, they appeal to the Moral Majority.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: They'll make some type of argument like that, which is.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Which is what they're. Which is what that crowd was doing.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Yeah. The crowd that showed up was the. We're the Moral Majority. Yeah.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: And what's interesting is you can find pagans, you can find the lost, who will join it with Christians to oppose things like this. So, yeah, it's interesting. The little remnants of, Of God's character in. Even in the lost.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: That hasn't been destroyed by sin or whatnot. They have a little bit of an instinct, but apparently.
But, you know, I think I know why. First of all, that heritage was the Catholic heritage that was there, actually. That's where we got those things from. They did a great job with that. I think the failure was, is, is that if it wasn't part of the sacraments, then it was all fair game.
And so as long as you. And it's the same with Protestants, we can attend church. We can actually affirm the right doctrines. If you're, if you're confessional.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:43] Speaker C: Or go through the right worship. Worship experience on Sunday mornings.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker C: As long as you check those boxes, then you're, then you're kind of going right with God as opposed to what all the scripture does, which is. Judges your personal life, judges your.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Like all the way you run your business.
[00:26:59] Speaker C: Ephesians and later part of Romans. It's all.
Now that you're in Christ. Yeah.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: It's a lot of Christ in a big old chunk of your life. I think it's a good tattoo.
We can't make that same mistake of staying in the church walls with our following of Christ and to know that he's actually worshiped. He's worshiped there in, in the sack, in the Word and the worship and all these different things. But he's also really worshiped. When you go home and you, you, you provide the kingdom of heaven for your wife, for your kids, and for your literal structure of your home or your, or your dog, you know, or like a chicken. Chickens were designed to glorify God by being in food, by being, by doing their chicken thing with not a lot of intellect and then. And then be being delicious, you know, and having a little like three year old, maybe torture it to death. That's a, that's a theological problem.
But I'm just saying that's God's good design right now until he returns. And these people are going about their, their eschatology, in a sense, and just use these things for death. And it's the gladiator thing, you know, and get, get some kicks out of it.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
We have a responsibility to take our faith more than just into church or into just our house, to podcasts. And in the podcast it goes farther. Right. It goes into our neighborhoods, it goes into our cities, and it goes into, you know, the cockfighting arena or maybe the closing of the cockfighting arena, I should say. So these are all just important things for us to think about. So we would obviously not be pro cockfighting here in Saint Leger Parish. And we believe, according to the Bible that the Lord would say we should definitely not participate in those things. So guys, thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. Thank you guys so much for joining me for this episode. Oh yeah. You can go to the parishcircuit.com to find more information about the things that we've talked about in the past, upcoming podcasts. If you've got suggestions of things that you'd like us to discuss, we'd love to hear from it. We are local, focused, and we are about truth, goodness and beauty for Acadiana and all of Louisiana. Thank you guys so much for listening and we'll see you all next time.
