By Colby Malsbury

Oh boy, you sure have to be careful goin’ 110 down the misinformation superhighway these days. There are all kinds of nogoodniks out there adept at using coded phraseology and manipulation tactics learned from Newsmax to send you down into a rabbit hole that can only end up on a message board on Stormfront, circa 2008. We don’t want that, of course. So what is to be done? Well, you can do like we did and interview the eminent and eloquent Erasmian egalitarian ecclesiastic Duncan Wilson Strachan Redbleeder, Westminster Seminarian and official chaplain for Gen-Z For Change – whose membership regularly calls him ‘Boomer’ even though he was born in 1983 – to get his insights on the matter.

Tribal Theocrat: Good afternoon. Christ is King.

Dr. Redbleeder: I’m going to stop you right there.

TT: I seriously doubt that, but do go on.

DR: If we are to continue this discourse, you will cease and desist with triggering phrases of the most virulent racism and anti-semitism, used by Proud Boys and assorted other MAGA miscreants as code phrases meant to flame disunity and fascism within the Church Empathetic. Am I clear?

TT: As Crystal Pepsi. And may I add that you must have been a delight to be quarantined with for months on end during the Covid years.

DR: Eight of my cats ran away from home during those trying times, and the other one died. But that’s neither here nor there.

TT: About like your misshapen goatee, then. You really shouldn’t shave in the shower. But on what possible basis could you object to a public proclamation of the Kingship of Jesus over all things spiritual and temporal?

DR: Thou limiter! Know ye not that my Christ is not a mere realm-bound king, but a Savior???!!! Dare ye bind Him to the domain of Caesar??? Are ye so epistemologically unaware as to perceive not His innumerable triumphs over the lie that is all things carnal??? Depart from Him, for ye never knew Him!!!

TT: As befits a good liberal progressive, I can see that your preferred pronouns are ‘thou/ye’.

DR: I don’t get it.

TT: Don’t sweat the small stuff. I’ll be pleasant and pretend you’re an authority on this subject. Could you give us a little backstory as to how this controversy first came to fruition?

DR: It’s one of the great horror stories of our time – almost as appalling as when I was locked out of my Patreon account for a day and a half because my mom threw out my password while spring cleaning. That Joshua of our time, Ben Shapiro, in his ceaseless and selfless duty of administering The Daily Wire – an endeavor worthy of the most Presbyterian of magistrates, I might add – took righteous umbrage with the rantings and ravings against our most nobly besieged ally Israel from that literally-Hitler Candace Owens and rightfully excommunicated her from the congregation. Did she humbly submit to her fate and bedeck herself in sackcloth and ashes? No!!!! Instead, she sicced her abominable Caucasian minions on him in most unwinsome fashion and insulted the memory of his immediate family who perished in the Holocaust by spamming the entirety of cyberspace with sacrilegious semantics such as ‘Christ is King’!!! Pah!!!! I refuse to release any of my Patreon funds her way!!! Here I stand, I can do no other.

TT: Now let’s just hold the horses for one cotton-pickin’ minute. You do realize that Candace Owens is black, yes? And furthermore, that she has a white British husband, who she is not averse to shamelessly marketing, as befits her brand? Isn’t this the exact kind of ‘civic nationalist’ you people were championing as bulwarks of the faith not even five years ago?

DR: I hardly know where to begin in responding to such horrendous notification, except to express my visceral disgust in your obvious substitution of Stephen Wolfe over the Larger Catechism as your article of faith. My god sees no color, and I refuse to fathom why yours does! Of course, this also explains well your obsessive need to besmirch my savior with such Machiavellian slurs as ‘king’, too. Really, I’m trying to fathom how I can scourge you within the synagogue after I have already cast you forth from it!

TT: NatGeo once offered me a freelance assignment to go on location to Burkina Faso and take pictures of the urban slums within. I turned the gig down because I thought it was too stressful. Little did I know. But I digress. Let’s assume you are correct and that ‘Christ is King’ is being used for less-than-hallowed purposes? Why get in a hot lather over it? Is not the message itself still inexplicably true? Jesus is heralded as the One True King a myriad of times in Scripture. The entire Gospel of Matthew is predicated on presenting Christ as King.

DR: Bro, do you even exegesis? I mean, have you ever READ^* the Gospel accounts??? Jesus never insisted the apostles lug about a throne so that He could sit over them in splendor when the day’s work was done! In Reformed circles, I’m considered quite the scholar on political science, you know. It is apparent that in His dealings with the twelve, His preferred social fabric was a syndicalist model entirely built on voluntarist principles of association entirely independent of any renderings Caesar thought right to impose on their purity of purpose. He was rather the progenitor of Cesar Chavez. Does that disturb you, you monarchical Mengele? I’m presuming you didn’t know Edward VIII was a Nazi either, did you???

TT: Voluntarist??? Jesus demanded of Peter, James, Andrew, John, Matthew, etc. ‘Follow Me’. He did not plead with them ‘Vote for Me’! Oh, never mind. This is like trying to explain to Justin Trudeau why Twitter is not like real-world experience. Let’s get uncomfortable here. I have gone over your social media posts from 3-5 years ago. There are pages upon pages of them. Have you ever held an actual job, ever? But you seemed to be quite free in proclaiming Christ to be King in the majority of them. Quite free in that ‘Christ is King’ were your exact words. So what has changed since then?

DR: What has changed is that hypocrisy and taunts now reign supreme! Not at all like the pristine internet I remember from 2010, when my screenshots from Farmville were the envy of everyone. The groyper kids these days don’t let their yay be yay and their nay nay! But I’m on to their schemes! Their pea brains can’t comprehend that language is every bit as fluid and evolutionary as our Constitution is! They will RUE THE DAY they made fun of me in that pic I posted wearing my cargo shorts in the pulpit!!! Filthy, pestiferous offal!!!

TT: Are you OK? Would you like to go home and have your wife serve you up some nice hot Zoloft for supper?

DR: I’m not married. I’m attending a Christian Single Mingle being put on by my church this weekend. Wish me luck?

TT: Go get em, Tiger. So social media sucks. There’s a news flash. But unless you’re going back to publishing tracts from independent publishers in Oklahoma and distributing them for free outside gas stations and Denny’s, it’s the only game in town. So do you have any solutions to offer? Or did you just agree to this interview for clout purposes?

DR:

TT: Well, that’s contextual. What in the world are you blathering on about now???

DR: Awww! Did I twigger the wacist? What’s the matter, snowflake? Are you mad that we’ve even won the Babylon Bee over to our way of thinking? How does it feel to lose, loser? We control the narrative. We are the future. We are the masters of the universe. And you’ll be begging us for mercy and a glass of ethically-sourced soy milk to drink and a tent to sleep in at night when we take command of the rules-based international order! Get used to it, chud!!!! Oh, and Dabney was pond scum, too.

TT: OK, I think it’s time we finished up before I punch you square in the face, you little (several expletives deleted).

DR: Oh, we’re done? All right. I’ll cut the livestream here then. Thank you to everyone who stayed with us this far, and please like and subscribe. It really helps me with the algorithm!

TT: Huh?

DR: If you wouldn’t mind doing the same thing. I’d really appreciate it, man.

TT: This was all broadcast?

DR: Why, sure! A fellow’s got to eat, after all, and jobs aren’t plentiful these days. Especially for Divinity majors with no mechanical or social skills whatever like myself.

TT: In the parlance of the times, what a low-energy cuckworthy performance this was.

DR: Hey, hate the player, not the game! Well, I should dash. I’m attending an Israeli solidarity be-in down at the community college this afternoon, and then I have to get to work on my sermon for this Sunday: ‘His blood be on us and on our children.’ Seeya! Oh, and don’t forget about the like and subscription, K?

TT: The internet was a mistake.

*I love it when my subjects screech autistically. – TT