Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Parish Circuit. I'm Stuart Amadon. With me is David Riley. And today we're talking about politics. We've been talking about politics for a long time, though. Like, there's been a lot of political discourse going on. We've interviewed both on the show and over the phone, different candidates running for different offices. We'll post those interviews or those articles online.
We talked about the positive things going on in Opelousas and St Andrew Parish. We talked about the negative things that are going on in our area and the things that are happening.
But today, I want to specifically orient this episode around something that I've noticed. Okay.
There is a lot of people in Opelousis and St. Landry Parish that have taken the black pill.
There's a lot of folks who have just given up.
They become either functional nihilists or actual nihilists in the area. You know, and you can, like, just. I would invite you to go to the Parish Circuit Facebook page and just scroll through the comments, man.
Just go scroll through the comments. And it's. Folks, like, I remember our most.
The episode that seemed to provoke people the hardest and the fastest was whenever we were optimistic about opportunity and Opelousis. Right.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: I was going to say that post in particular was the one that we saw. This, what you're talking about, this attitude towards Opelousis being revealed.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: It's the black pill.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Right?
[00:01:33] Speaker A: It's. And so for those of you who don't know what that means, that means the nihilistic pill, The. The pill that just gives up the. You know, you take the red pill, the blue pill. It's a matrix reference. And then there's the black pill, which is, I just quit. There's nothing I can do here. I'm just going to give up.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Right. Even. Even if you can figure out the. Whatever the truth is, it's all hopeless anyway.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. But what I'm trying to say is there's a better way. You know, there's a better way here.
Our problem is that we expend all of our energy on things that we can affect no change with.
We. We look out on the national scale. We look in the international spaces, like what's going on in France and Paris, and we expend our energy and our anxiety and our stress on, oh, no, what's going to happen to the West. Oh, no, what's going to happen to the nation as a whole?
And we don't do anything on a local level.
And there is so much opportunity here, but we have got to reorient ourselves and point ourselves towards areas that we can actually affect change. And I am here to tell you, dead gummet, you can affect change on a local level with very little effort.
Very little effort.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yep. Here'd be like, an example that I've thought of before is you could. You could spend your whole life incredibly frustrated and angry and active in politics on the national level, and by the end of your life, you will have affected probably no change.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: 0.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: 0. And yet I would. I would say a good portion of, you know, Americans, that's what they do. Right. We are caught up in this political game.
And while they're. I'm not saying that national politics are unimportant, but we put our. Like you said, we put our energy there. We put our anxiety there. And you could do that for your whole life, and you could hate a lot of people for your whole life, and you could affect zero change by the end of it. But expending just a little time and energy, could you better the life of your. Of yourself, your family, and your neighbor tomorrow?
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Yes. The answer to that is yes. Yes, all the way down.
I mean, and you could. We could talk about that. We could talk about the little things just like that.
And I think we should talk about that.
But I would also argue the way that you can affect change on a city, parish, and state level with very little effort. Okay.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: So I'll just give you some straight up examples. I don't remember how many years ago this was. Three or four years ago.
Dustin Miller, state representative, he abstained from a vote on keeping boys out of girls bathrooms. This is whenever the transgender issue was going on. He abstained from a vote on that.
And I saw that he abstained from that vote because voting records are public. And I screenshotted it, put. Put it on Facebook and said, hey, guys, heads up. Dustin Miller just did this.
And just.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Or just didn't. Oh, sorry.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Just abstained. Just abstained. Yeah, that's right. And I wasn't even. I don't even think I was volatile or anything. I think I was just like, here, this happened. Boom, thing took off. Okay. Dustin Miller texted me, State rep texts me, and we start having a conversation about it.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:05:03] Speaker A: I'm nobody. Okay. I'm not. I'm not on a. Like, I.
I'm a nobody.
Homies on my phone. We're talking through these things.
And from that point forward, Dustin has not done that again. And the transgender issue has come up on the Ballot several times since then from just. From that. From just that little thing. Okay, that took, what, 15 seconds worth of effort or less?
We had an abortion doctor move into Opelousas. Same thing happened. Somebody, a friend of mine at the time, texted me and said, hey, this is going on in our town. And I said, oh, snap, that's one block from my house.
And so I walked outside, saw where the abortion doctor was moving in, took pictures, made a little video, put it on the Internet. Blew up three years later. We have a pregnancy center in Opelousas that ministers to babies and stops them from dying actively and has saved babies in this town.
It does not take much, man.
You can participate and be engaged on a local level in your town. You do not have to take the black pill.
There is hope and prosperity and the good life, not just for you, but for all these other people who live here.
And you can be a part of that.
Like, the mission is ripe. The Reformation is right there.
Stop getting distracted by nonsense that you can't do anything about and put your hand to the plow.
This can be done.
The mission can be accomplished.
The gospel can go out in Opelousa's and St. Landry parish. The world can get better. It's happened.
This has happened in the world before. And this used to be something that was just ingrained in the DNA of the Christian.
It was just a part of who we were.
Like, if you look through church history, you know, it's October. We're coming up on Reformation Day, October 31st. Martin Luther nails the 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Chapel Revival Reformation.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a 1517 version of the Facebook post.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: That's basically what he did, right?
Yeah. Because the chapel door is basically the bulletin board of the community. You know, people are like, oh, he's taking it straight to the church. I'm like, well, not really. That's the bulletin board of town. He's nailing up a notice. Same exact general idea here.
He just did it. And the world took off from that point forward.
Boniface chopping down Donner's Oak. There's this pagan oak in the city in which he's witnessing to these pagans in. They're still worshiping these pagan gods, Donner, which is the Germanic pagan Thor.
And Boniface gets over there, I think, with a couple of his buddies, brings his axe. They've all got their axe, and they start going to town on this oak and take it down. Public acts of faith. Public acts of faith, man. This is a part of who we are.
We can be there again.
Christians can be there again. We just have to stop letting the psyop take us off course and instead focus on what's in front of us.
Don't take the black pill, you guys.
Don't do it.
You don't have to.
We can do this. We have before.
Look in front of you and put your hands to the plow.
It can be done, and it can be done in little ways, simple things.
Get up in the morning, put your feet on the floor, Read your Bible, love your family, take them to church. What a revolution that would start.
Find a church that preaches the Bible, that holds to the faith of our fathers, not some emotional ooey gooey, Jesus is my boyfriend nonsense.
Go to a solid Christian church that you will be discipled with the Bible in that you can bring your family to with confidence and know that they're going to pursue the Lord with their whole heart.
Growing up in the historic orthodox Christian creeds and faith and pursue it.
Feet on the floor. Bible in the morning. Love your family, Go to church. Amen.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: And Stuart's not referencing the Eastern Orthodox Church, by the way. There, That's where Christ just got to
[00:09:57] Speaker A: throw that out there.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Might go there. So anyway, that's absolutely true.
The question I would ask, too, if people are seeing this as, like a big thing. We've come to a place in our society where we don't, you know, as Americans, we barely take responsibility for our families and our homes and things like that, much less our neighbors and our neighborhoods and our towns. Yes, but there are just such simple and small steps that we can take to start taking that responsibility and things would change. I mean, do you know the names of your neighbors and do you have their numbers? You know, start there. Start there. Hey, neighbor. Look, in case anything ever happens and I can help you out or need your help, can I get your number? Let's make sure we have some communication. Have them over for the barbecue.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, let's get rolling. Amen.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Get a tribe.
Go. Go connect with. With your church, with your people.
Get a tribe and do the work.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Tribalism.
No, I'm just kidding.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Well, you know what I'm like.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: I mean, I'm trying to.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: You need a people.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: I'm bringing the anticipated accusation.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: I want you to. Oh, yes. You're telling us all to be tribalists. Yes. Ah, that Amadon guy, he's over there making tribes get. Get a people. That's what. Okay, so whenever. Whenever Israel came out of Egypt, right?
They came out of Egypt, and they came out with a mixed multitude, okay? And the mixed multitude was. That means that Egyptians came out with them. It wasn't just Israelites. It was also Egyptians. And then immediately after their coming out, God gave them a way for this group that wasn't just Israel to come together as one people. He gave them the covenant sign of circumcision, and he gave them the covenant sign of the Passover. He said, here's how you do it. Circumcise, which now is baptism and Passover, which now is the Lord's Supper. He's like, go be a people. Here's how you do it. Same thing applies today.
Go to church. You hadn't been baptized. Get baptized. Go take the Lord's Supper and go to work in your community.
Like, we.
We are a small band. You know, I would say, like, me and my friends, like, our people, okay, are covenanted people. Like, what? We got, like 100, 120 people on a Sunday, something like that. Like, not a ton of people.
And the effect that this small band has had on this town and on this parish is profound. Okay? Like, the fact that we engage and have leverage and influence and can move the needle in this parish, in this town, and in the state as a whole is amazing. It's absolutely amazing.
It's really just because God is blessed.
Like, God has blessed us with the awareness to be able to look around and say, hey, I think I can affect change here.
And then he has deployed us to do it. Don't take the black pill, you guys, don't do it.
Don't follow the fad that we've seen on the Internet, especially in, like, just pick a parish circuit, Facebook post and scroll it for a second.
Don't take the black pill. Don't follow the fed. Be a rebel.
Be somebody who wants to advance good, real good gospel, good in the community in which we live. You can do it. You actually can. It can literally be done.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: So by rebel, you mean, like, against maybe the idols of our current.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Well, I think to go with the flow is to black pill right now. That's what I'm saying.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Like, the norm is to knock on Opelousas, to knock on St. Landry parish. The norm is to be like, oh, these people don't get anything. They can't figure it out. I'm leaving. Like, that's the norm here.
Instead, what I'm saying is act different, go the other way,
[00:14:09] Speaker B: but not into.
And I don't think anyone's going to get this from what we've said so far, but not into the optimistic and everything's great
[00:14:24] Speaker A: because it does stay between the ditches.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: It does exist. There are people who.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: I haven't seen it.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah, here's the example I'm thinking of.
We're in an election cycle and in some of the races, it doesn't seem like we have the clear great option of like, someone who is not a statist, who loves the Lord, who's raising their family well, who isn't connected to scandal, all those things, who checks all the boxes.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: All the options are hold your nose options.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: And yet there will be people who will get behind those candidates and see no problems.
You get what I'm saying?
So we're not saying just like, don't look for truth and right and justice when it needs to be pointed out and justice needs to be had, but there is hope. There is hope for reformation and change.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: And it can be done. It can be done.
It is possible and it is attainable within our lifetime. Yeah, it's absolutely.
Geneva became a completely different town when Calvin was there. Within his lifetime.
We can experience the same thing here. Or Glasgow with Chalmers, or Plymouth Plantation with the Puritans.
All of this is attainable.
It's been done before.
It just takes Christians banding together, covenanting together, to move forward and do the work. Seems hard, seems impossible. Wow. It's almost like God didn't tell Gideon to leave the vast majority of his army at home before he went and fought the Midianites.
The Lord does not need us to have big crowds, but there is an opportunity here.
Let's go to work.
Let's go to work and get the mission accomplished. You can do this. We can do this. It's within reach. You can actually affect change. You can bring the gospel to bear the law of God to bear on your city council, on your parish council. You can do it. It'll be really hard. I remember whenever we.
Whenever we first shifted the way. Do you remember this, David? Whenever we first shifted the way that we engaged in the public sphere as a church, do you remember this? I sat down with all the men in the church and I said, hey, guys. It was right around the time that the abortion Roe v. Wade fell. Okay, I just remember saying, hey, guys, heads up. We're about to go loud, we're about to go hot. It's happening. And that means we're about to fight. We're about to say stuff in the public sphere and we're probably going to screw it up a couple of Times along the way, but we're at least going to try. We've never done this before.
We think we're supposed to, it looks like from the Bible that we're supposed to. We're going to move forward.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: And in that, in that example, it was really just like celebrating a good thing even that was like.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: And going after the people who went after us.
Not being the polite Christian who said, oh, well, we don't want to hurt you guys feelings. It's okay if you want to kill babies. Calling sin what it was. You may not kill a child.
You will not.
We will not let this happen on our watch.
Speaking in strong, direct, plain, masculine speech to the world around us.
That was a different moment for a lot of us whenever we first realized that it was like, oh, oh, Christian, oh.
We didn't know we were allowed to talk this way. We didn't know.
And there was a sense in which whenever we first started doing this, there were definitely fumbles along the way. There was definitely like, ah, well, probably went too hard right there. Probably shouldn't have started that fight. That was a mistake.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: There was a lot of learning to do along the way.
I think we figured it out now and what I'd like to do is I'd like to invite people to come with us. Like, we can do this. We've proven it.
Let's ride.
I feel like, I feel like gunslinger right now. I don't know. Ever watch Tombstone?
[00:18:39] Speaker B: I actually haven't. Oh, man, that's probably crazy.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: You gotta watch that movie. Yeah. I feel like Wyatt Earp. Like, let's go. Let's get this done. Let's get the work done, man. It can be. It's. It is within reach. It is attainable. It is doable. Let's get to work.
I, We've. We've had so many opportunities so far.
There, there are more in front of us.
Don't take the black pill.
You can get through this. Like, and it really is so simple. It is so simple as get up in the morning, feet on the floor, read your Bible, love your family, and go be a part of a covenant church.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: But Stuart, where's my two hour block of time? Scrolling Facebook and getting really mad.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Throw that crap away.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Getting really mad.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Burn that nonsense to the ground about
[00:19:28] Speaker B: all the things I can't control.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah. What?
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Stop accepting the rage marketing the outrage marketing nonsense from the talking heads. Turn that crap off and point your energy where you can actually affect change, which you can hear. We've proven it.
We've proven it.
You can be a part. Get on the truck and let's ride. Let's ride. Don't take the black pill. You guys, don't listen to that stuff. Let's build an effect change here in our town, in our parish and in our state. It's within reach. Let's get to work. Let's do it.
All right, guys, that's it. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. We appreciate you, and we hope to see you on the field.
