The Flame Shall Not Consume You

Joe Rogan, Wesley Huff, Los Angeles, and Jesus

File: The resurrection of Jesus Christ LCCN2003679964.tif - Wikimedia Commons

What a cold cold day it is here. So cold we didn’t even try to walk outside, to the chagrin of the dogs who would have immediately wanted to come back in. They are staring at us balefully, sure that we have denied them something precious. Sigh. Is this what it’s like to be some sort of tinpot god?

Anyway, I finished listening to the amazing Joe Rogan interview with Wesley Huff late last night. It took me a couple of days as I am not accustomed to listening to such long podcasts. Then I got on Twitter, as one does, and scrolled around. There I came across many horrifying pictures and video of the fires in California, intermingled with a lot of tweets about whether or not Huff had adequately shared the gospel. All of this flow of commentary caused me to think several thoughts, which I will now share in no particular order.

First, like so many people, I am utterly astonished by the devastation from the fires. The best word to describe it is ‘dystopian hellscape.’ It seems like the fevered aftermath of some awful movie where they blow everything up and then Arnold Schwarzenegger emerges all bloody and holding a gun. Then to see the clips of interviews with the Mayor and the Chief of Police, and the footage of the LA Fire Department in a Pride Parade, and then to see the staggering news that the Mayor had cut the fire department budget by millions of dollars—the list of terrible revelations just goes on and on. But mostly the thing that sticks in the mind is the great wall of fire devouring everything. Some people—and I think it’s appropriate—have flung around the phrase “biblical proportions.”

So that’s on one side. On the other side is a three-hour conversation such as I have never heard in any secular kind of space. Somehow I had missed the phenomenon of Wesley Huff. My children all knew about him but never bothered to tell me. They watched the horror of his “debate” with Billy Carson, a person I had also never heard of, as soon as it came out. I’m about halfway through that, now, but am having to take breaks because it’s so, as the kids say, cringe.