Three weeks ago, I wrote about Stephen Colbert’s fifteen-minute campaign ad for James Talarico, wolf in sheep’s clothing who is doing what Satan’s minions always do: deceive. Talarico defeated another phony, the goofy Jasmine Crockett, in the primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas and is now being hailed as the kind of Christian Democrats can get behind—that would be the heretical kind.
Colbert, another wolf in sheep’s clothing, was instrumental in putting Talarico over the primary finish line. The light in this dark mess is that Texans now have sufficient time to learn more about the twisted ideas percolating in the mind that Talarico hides behind his innocent Sunday school boy mask.
Steve Toth, the Republican who defeated Dan Crenshaw in Texas, just days ago described the real Talarico:
I served with James Talarico from 2019 through to today. This guy’s as evil as they come. There’s a darkness to this man’s life. … If you doubt that there’s a wickedness, and an evil, and a demonic presence in the world, you have to look at James Talarico. He’s an awful, awful person.
In Ezra Klein’s interminable interview with Talarico, Talarico opined on “Christian nationalism.” Sounding more like Huey Lewis than Jesus, Talarico said, “Christian nationalists are more committed to the love of power than to the power of love.”
Ironically, lefty podcaster Klein began his interview with strict church-state separationist Talarico by asking him about his faith and his politics: “So, I wanted to start with your faith because your politics is so rooted in your faith for you.”
Talarico who has condemned the commingling of faith and political power when it comes to Christians who affirm orthodoxy as opposed to Talarico’s heresy said,
I grew up in a Presbyterian church. … And our pastor, Dr. Jim Rigby … he’s a unique … religious leader and thinker and got in trouble a lot when I was in elementary school. He was ordaining gay and lesbian clergy. He was blessing same-sex unions. … I think it’s hard to remember just how controversial universally it was, how radical and dangerous it was. And we almost lost our church because of those actions by our minister and our congregation.
Talarico elaborated on just how theologically deviant his pastor was and how it malformed Talarico’s faith:
So, I was brought up in a very countercultural faith. … Dr. Jim, my pastor, always said that religion shouldn’t lead to itself. Religion should lead you deeper into your own life, into your own being.
Apparently, Dr. Jim and Talarico don’t think religion should lead to religion or to God. The solipsistic, relativistic, and subjectivist navel-gazing that defines leftism—that is, the deification of man and relativizing of truth—produced James Talarico and propelled him to seek power to institute his religious beliefs.
He’s a heretic and a sophist, using deceptive (and childish) arguments that sound to untutored ears reasonable:
[T]he ground of our being, the cosmos, however you want to define God, somehow looks like this humble, compassionate, barefoot rabbi in the first century, someone who broke cultural norms, someone who stood up for the vulnerable and the marginalized, someone who challenged religious authority. That to me is such a revolutionary idea, and it leads you to challenge organized religion because the gospel I think just inherently tries to break out of some of these religious dogmas and orthodoxies and challenges religion itself.
Jesus didn’t break cultural norms just to break cultural norms. He broke cultural norms that didn’t reflect universal truth.
When Christians seek to outlaw abortion or same-sex marriage, they are seeking to break cultural norms that violate truth. They are seeking to challenge the religious dogmas of the religion practiced by Talarico.
Since Talarico believes Jesus came to challenge religious authority, dogmas, orthodoxies, and religion itself, does that include his, Dr. Jim’s, and his denomination—the leftist PCUSA’s—dogmas and orthodoxies as well?
Jesus demanded his followers align their feelings, words, beliefs, actions, and will with objective, immutable, transcendent truth as revealed by God, the Father. Jesus didn’t demand his followers arbitrarily break cultural norms or challenge all religious authority.
Jesus healed the sick in body and spirit. He commanded rich and poor alike to repent and follow him. He established his church and defined its structure. Jesus Christ didn’t challenge “religion itself.” He created his church—his bride. He established the “religious dogmas and orthodoxies” of his bride. Jesus said,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Jesus did not come to abolish religion but to establish and grow his church. He “came to to seek and save the lost.”
There are logical outworkings—implications and entailments—of all religious beliefs, including Talarico’s false beliefs.
For those, like Talarico, who believe that “truth” is whatever is found deep inside one’s own “being,” there is no objective, transcendent, unchanging truth. No moral truth, no ontological truth, no teleological truth. That’s how you get these Deep Thoughts from Talarico:
Matthew 25 tells us exactly how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved. By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger, by visiting the prisoner, nothing about being a Christian, nothing about going to church, nothing about saying the Lord’s Prayer, nothing about reading the Bible, just helping others, just loving.
There is no truth in James Talarico.
Here’s what else God’s word says:
Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
Talarico believes, “Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six.”
He believes that Scripture says nothing about “consensual same sex relationships,” that the Annunciation proves God supports abortion, and that “pretty woke” St. Paul denies the twoness of the sexes.
The breadth of his dishonest abuse of Scripture is no clearer than in the series of rhetorical questions he poses to suggest that conservative Christians are inconsistent or hypocritical:
Instead of posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom, why don’t [conservatives] post “money is the root of all evil” in every boardroom? Why don’t they post “do not judge” in every courtroom? Why don’t they post “turn the other cheek” in the halls of the Pentagon? Or “it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven” on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange?
Scripture doesn’t condemn money. The verse he misquoted says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” The goal of boardrooms is to earn profits for their companies. Earning profits is not evil. In fact, in the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Ten Minas, servants who fail to grow their monetary gifts were punished. Moreover, boardrooms are not government entities in which lawmakers should proclaim what should be posted on their walls.
Similarly, the New York Stock Exchange is not a government agency, and the verse about the difficulty rich men may have in getting to heaven is not a blanket condemnation of wealth. Rather, it is a warning about the risk wealth can pose to our spiritual health.
The biblical admonition in Matthew to turn the other cheek has nothing to do with war or the responsibility of government to protect its citizens. It is a verse addressing interpersonal conflict.
The verse Talarico cherry-picked to imply that our judicial system errs in judging criminals says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” This is not a command from God to abolish courts.
No Christian would advocate for the inclusion of “do not judge” in every courtroom because that would be a gross misapplication of Scripture, which a seminarian should know and an honest Christian would acknowledge.
This verse means Christians should not judge hypocritically. We should apply standards of judgment consistently.
Scripture also says, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”
Steve Toth is right. There is a darkness in Talarico. Texans should heed the warning of Charles Spurgeon:
Satan is never so much to be feared as when he appears as an angel of light. He does not come with a dragon’s roar, but with a serpent’s hiss. He does not show his cloven foot, but he hides it in a silver slipper. He does not use a sword, but he uses a honeyed word. He will not always bid you to be a murderer or a thief; he will rather bid you to be a ‘good, moral man,’ and to rest in your own works, and so to despise the finished work of Christ.
James Talarico’s Christian persona is a costume he wears to deceive.