The American Soul
The American Soul
Trusting God's Timing: Lessons from James and de Tocqueville
The interwoven threads of faith and liberty form the essential fabric of American democracy—but what happens when one thread is pulled away? Jesse Cope tackles this profound question by exploring the wisdom of James 4, alongside penetrating observations from Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Winthrop about America's foundation.
Diving into James 4, Jesse examines our tendency to rush God's timing and the "dumpster fires" we create when impatience overrides trust. The chapter's warnings about worldly desires, conflicts, and pride reveal how internal spiritual struggles manifest as societal problems. Through personal reflection, Jesse acknowledges his own struggles with patience, making this spiritual journey deeply relatable.
The podcast takes a fascinating historical turn as Jesse unpacks de Tocqueville's famous observation that "despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot." This isn't merely philosophical musing—it's a blueprint for understanding why democratic systems fail without moral foundations. When Robert Winthrop's stark declaration that societies must be governed "either by the Bible or by the bayonet" enters the conversation, we see the real-world implications of removing spiritual foundations from public life.
What makes this episode particularly powerful is how it connects historical wisdom to contemporary challenges. Jesse illustrates this through examining post-Saddam Iraq, where removing despotic control without established moral foundations for self-government led to chaos rather than liberty. The lesson becomes clear: freedom requires more than the absence of tyranny; it demands the presence of virtue.
For anyone concerned about America's future, this thoughtful exploration of faith's role in sustaining freedom offers both warning and hope. Listen as Jesse makes a compelling case for returning to a nation that prays publicly and embraces the spiritual foundations that make liberty possible.
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The content focuses on the podcast's themes of faith, liberty, prayer, patience, and the connection between Christianity and American democracy, drawing from the host's discussion of James 4 and writings by de Tocqueville and Winthrop.
The American Soul Podcast
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Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in, sort of appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of your time and effort, a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. Hopefully it gives us all some extra tools for our toolbox and hopefully it helps us draw closer to God and Jesus Christ, both as individuals and as a nation. For those of y'all that continue to share the podcast and tell others about it, thank you Very, very grateful. And for those of y'all that continue to pray for the podcast and for me, thank you so much, incredibly grateful for that. Father. Thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for Father and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace, your forgiveness of sins. Thank you for the time to record this podcast and the people that listen to it. Be with them and their families, guide them, bless them, surround them with your angels, protect them from evil of any kind. Help us, father, to help those that have less than we do. Help us to help those who don't know you, lead them to you, father, and your Son Jesus Christ, and help us to trust you, whatever our circumstances are, father Good times, bad times, joy, pain and to know that this little piece of eternity is not very long in the grand scheme of things and that our only real job here is to choose your son, jesus Christ, and to follow his commands and therefore yours. Help us to keep that in focus when the world crowds in on us, makes us anxious, makes us scared, makes us feel alone, as if nobody else understands. Help us to remember that you do, that your son does, and that we're never truly alone. But help us, father, father, to help those who feel alone. Help us to help those who are oppressed, who are misused, mistreated, abused, especially children and widows, and those who are persecuted because they follow the name of your son, jesus Christ. Give us that kind of faith, father, to know, to truly know, that you already know everything about our life, where we're going, what's going to happen, when you're going to bring us home, and that we can trust you and God. My words here Father, please, in your son's name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1:Have you made time for God today? Have you made time to read his word? Have you made time to pray, to talk to him? Tell him thank you for all the blessings he's bestowed upon you, seek forgiveness for whatever sins you've committed and pray for those around you Nation, community, church, school, business, friends, family, parents, children, spouse. What are you doing today? What are your priorities? Are you constantly thinking about those priorities throughout the day? Are you constantly praying Right? Are you constantly praying for your spouse?
Speaker 1:Like we, a lot of us like to complain about our life spouse, kids, friends, job. How many of us pray about those things? What would it be like if, every time there was a problem, we went to God? And specifically, when you're talking about marriage, what would it be like if? If every time we were kind of at a crossroads, or throughout the day, we prayed to God about our marriage and our spouse and for his will to be done, even if you're married to somebody that doesn't seem to be concerned about God and Jesus Christ? Maybe it doesn't even seem to be concerned about you anymore. Maybe they never were, maybe it was just a bad idea from the get-go.
Speaker 1:God tells us that faith can move mountains. If faith can move mountains. Faith can do a lot of things for your marriage, for your life. It may not mean that the situation changes, folks. It may not mean that everything is suddenly hunky-dory and wonderful, but if it's not. But if it's not, it will mean peace and perseverance from God. We just have to trust. And, man, I know that's hard, I'm not saying it's simple, I am still working on that and I have things in my life that make me work really hard on that and sometimes it just doesn't seem possible. So I'm not sitting here telling you something that I'm not struggling with either, folks, and I'm not telling you something to do that I don't need to be doing.
Speaker 1:Also, james, chapter 4. Things to avoid. Man, how many of us need to hear about things to avoid? I do. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members. You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Speaker 1:You, adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us, but he gives a greater grace. Therefore it says God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Speaker 1:Submit, therefore to God, resist the devil. Submit therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded, be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and he will exalt. You.
Speaker 1:Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you who judge your neighbor? Come now. You who say today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit, yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is a sin. James packs a lot in a little bit huh.
Speaker 1:Verses 2 and 3, you lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. How many of us want things not to further god's kingdom but because of some kind of pleasure of our own? You can't see me right now, but my hand's raised 100%. How many of us want things Not to benefit others, to save others, not even often to save ourselves, but just to make life easier for pleasure, for this world? I'm 100% guilty. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about cars, folks, money, houses, land, girls, jobs, doesn't matter how many of us ask for things.
Speaker 1:Right, we talk about praying every day and the need to pray, and we do need to pray. But you know, there's not a right way to pray in the sense of the words that you speak, folks, but there's a right way to pray in the sense of the state of your heart. That one hurts a little bit, that's a little too close to home because, god, there's some things that I really want and need or think I need. I think one of the examples that popped into my head just now was the state of our country. How many of us pray for America? Not because we want to save lost souls, we want more time to bring more people to God and Jesus Christ, but because we don't want to have to go through the pain and heartache of a civil war or revolution or you know, the pain of falling into communism and trying to be a Christian in that setting.
Speaker 1:Leftism, atheism, islam, right. We look around the world and we see the people that struggle under those systems horribly Communism, socialism, right. China goes around killing people just so they can harvest organs Well documented. Or they tell you you can only have a certain number of kids and if you don't, if you get pregnant again, if your wife gets pregnant again, you got to murder the kid Not now, but it used to be or you go to one of the Muslim nations where their holy book you use that term in quotes tells them that if anybody's not Muslim, they can do whatever they want to them If they won't submit and convert, rape them, kill them, torture them, steal all their property, behead them. All fair game.
Speaker 1:And we see that and it's fearful, rightfully so. And we see that and it's fearful, rightfully so. And we don't want to fall under the evil, the tyranny of leftism and Islam, communism, socialism, and we shouldn't want to and we ought to fight against that. But, folks, we got to remember that this is not our home and this world is never going to be perfect until Jesus Christ comes back. And so if God is gracious enough to give us more time in this world, to give America another lease on life, you have to almost know that he's giving us more time, not so that we don't have to suffer, but so that we can reach more lost souls, so that we can be that city on a hill so that we can be that light to others to lead them away from an eternity in hell.
Speaker 1:And to God and Jesus Christ, verse 7. Submit, therefore, to god. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to god and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Out of these two the the thing. Submit, therefore, to god, basically what we were talking about earlier trusting god, man, that's hard to do sometimes and then draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
Speaker 1:How many of us complain that God's not close to us but we're not trying to draw close to him? Right, and you can make this exact same argument in your marriage. And then my spouse just, they're not close to me, they don't feel close. Are you trying to draw close to them? And maybe you are folks and maybe you are with God too.
Speaker 1:And there's a great sermon by Billy Graham, part of a speech sermon that he gave, and he was talking about that and I think he was talking to his mother about it. He said you know, sometimes I feel so close to God that I can just feel him sitting there on the couch with me, and other times I pray and I pray and I just don't feel anything. I feel like God's not there at all, and I wish I could remember his mother's words to him, but she basically told him those are the times that you might actually be closest to God, are those times when you can't feel him because he's right there helping you. I wish I had her quote, and I don't right now. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and he will exalt you, verse 10.
Speaker 1:How many of us don't want to wait on God. We want what we want when we want it. We don't want to be humble and patient and let God exalt us to whatever level he wants to exalt us. We want money and power and fame, and we want it right now. And maybe those aren't your things, right. Maybe you want a quiet life, which is laudable, right. That's one of the things in the New Testament. Try and lead a quiet life, great. Maybe you have other desires, though. Maybe you want land or cattle or clothes or love. Maybe you want a spouse. Maybe you don't have one and you want one right now.
Speaker 1:I saw a lady I think she was a comedian talking, and she was, but she was talking to a Christian group, obviously, or she was Christian herself and she was talking about you know, ladies, we make this list of things we want in a husband. It's a great list. We work on this list really hard, you know. We got some good things in there and we pray to God. We say, okay, god, here's the list, this is it, I'm ready, I'm ready to get married, and nothing happened.
Speaker 1:A month passes, two months pass, three months pass still nothing. A year passes and we're still single and we're starting to go. All right, god, I mean, I'm ready. I don't know why you're having so much trouble to find this guy. Two years pass, we put the list away. Nah, not praying anymore, or just kind of half-heartedly. Five years past, get the list back out, look at it. You know what we need to. Let's work on this list again a little bit. Let's. We need to revamp this list, because some of this stuff, just it ain't that important, right, because we want what we want when we want it in our time.
Speaker 1:Not, god's man, I'm guilty of that. I'm so guilty of that. I want exactly what I want when I want it, I want it, and even in that moment. I know that that's probably a bad idea, that God's timing is always, without exception, better than my timing. I still want it and I want it right now, whatever it is, and I get really frustrated when I pray for something over and over again and it doesn't happen exactly the way I want it when I want it. Patience, right, humility, letting God decide. And then how often do we get in trouble, folks, when we rush things? I can attest to that in my life. We go ahead and do something. Maybe we did talk to God about it, but just kind of briefly, and we're really not getting a strong signal from him one way or the other. So we just go ahead and do what we want to anyway.
Speaker 1:You know there's some memes out there that go around this was bouncing around in the back of my head and I was trying to remember it about how long so many of the people in the Bible waited right In the desert. Different things Joseph, abraham, david, you know Jesus, he didn't even start his ministry really until he was in his thirties, and maybe that's a different kind of example. But there's so many people in the Bible that had to wait years, decades. You know Abraham and Sarah wanted a child. They were in their 90s by the time they got a child.
Speaker 1:How many of us get tired after waiting for 30 minutes? Or maybe, if it's something big, for a week or two A year tops? I mean, that's pushing it. God, You're asking a whole lot to ask me to wait for something for a week or two A year tops. I mean, that's pushing it. God, you're asking a whole lot to ask me to wait for something for a year, five years? I might as well just go ahead and do this myself, because God's obviously incapable. 100% firsthand experience. Folks, it does not work out well Trying to help you out in that that I can tell you. I'm not a preacher, I'm not a priest, I'm not a teacher of the law by any means, just a simple common everyday man. And I can tell you firsthand that if you rush things when you're talking about God's timing, especially big things, it's a dumpster fire. And it may be a dumpster fire for a long time.
Speaker 1:I told y'all we weren't going back into Alexis de Tocqueville, but I found two things I want to read and we'll read those for however much time is left today, and then we will move on Again. All of this stuff for the last few days has been out of the section of Democracy in America titled Indirect Influence of Religious Opinions Upon Political Society in the United States. And this is the tail end, charlie. This is the very thing most amiss in America, and that the only element wanting to the freedom and happiness of the human race is to believe in some blind cosmogony or to assert with caponess the secretion of thought by the brain. I can only reply that those who hold this language have never been in America and that they have never seen a religious or a free nation. When they return from their expedition, we shall hear what they have to say.
Speaker 1:There are persons in France who look upon Republican institutions as a temporary means of power, of wealth and distinction, men who are the pondetiri of liberty, have no idea what that word is or means sorry, and who fight for their own advantage, whatever be the colors they wear. It is not to these that I address myself, but there are others who look forward to the republican form of government as a tranquil and lasting state towards which modern society is daily impelled by the ideas and manners of the time, and who sincerely desire to prepare men to be free when these men attack religious opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions to the prejudice of their interests. Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack, and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened and proportioned as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people which is its own master if it be not submissive to the divinity?
Speaker 1:So there's a couple of things out of his observations here. One of them is just the reassertion. You know that Christianity, religion because that's what he's talking about in America at this time, in the 1830s Christianity is tied directly to liberty. You know he says despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. That's the bottom line, folks. We can't have liberty without Christianity, without the principles of Christ. It's not going to happen. Every single bit of evidence shows us this is true. So I mean that's our choices.
Speaker 1:And if you're out there and you're listening to the podcast and you think I don't want anything to do with Christianity, fine, fair enough. We won't have liberty 100% will not have liberty. Zero doubt about that. Experience absolutely shows that to be true. And so you've got to pick a different form of government Despotism, tyranny, monarchy. But you can't have a Republican form of government and liberty without Christianity, without the general principles of Christ, specifically folks, not denominational doctrine. If denominational doctrine could produce liberty, then all of Europe under the Catholic and Orthodox churches would have produced republican forms of government with liberty. They did not.
Speaker 1:Robert Winthrop was Speaker of the House and he gave an address, I think, to the Massachusetts Bible Society in Boston, but don't hold me to that part and I think also on 28 May 1849. And it's pretty good speech from the bits that I've read, and maybe we'll spend a few days and read that. But I just want to read one part right now that ties into de Tocqueville's comment that despotism may govern without faith but liberty cannot. And then his last couple sentences how is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And proportion as a political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people which is its own master if it be not submissive to divinity? So he's saying if you're going to ease, if you're going to give people more liberty and less tyranny, less despotism, so if you're going to relax the political control, the control of the state on a people, you have to increase the moral control, their internal moral character. And so the only way you can do that is if you're going to have a people which is, you know, a government of the people, for the people, by the people, then those people have to be submissive to God and Jesus Christ. That's the only way it's going to work Right. And so this is the quote from Robert Winthrop, speaker of the house in 1849.
Speaker 1:The voice of experience and the voice of our own reasons speak but one language on this point. Both unite us in teaching us that men may as well build their houses upon the sand and expect to see them stand when the rains fall and the winds blow and the floods come, as to found free institutions upon any other basis than that morality and virtue of which the word of God is the only authoritative rule and the only adequate sanction. All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the word of God or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the state supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is religion which must support the state, which must support the state.
Speaker 1:And we went into Iraq after they got rid of Saddam Hussein. There was a vacuum, power vacuum, and there were a lot of people, particularly here in the United States, but in the West in general, that thought all right, man, we got it. Now liberty is going to show up, freedom is going to show up's going to show up, and that's not what happened. What happened instead is that you had evil men step into that vacuum, that void, because you did not have a people that were capable of self-government. That's the problem. When we try and force our form of government on other countries. It's possible, folks.
Speaker 1:I don't agree at all with the people that say, oh well, you just can't have that form of government. Some people can't function, because that's not the whole story. Anybody can function in a Republican form of government and enjoy liberty if they submit themselves to, as de Tocqueville said, god, divinity, controlled by the word of God, by the Bible, by a power without them right or within them right. That power from God, that's what we've got to have, and if you don't have that, then you can't have liberty. So when we got rid of Saddam Hussein, who was a despot and a tyrannical leader, but he controlled the people, he used physical force, he used law, even if he abused the law, he used it to his advantage when he wanted to, and so the people were controlled you took him away. Well, now the people don't have the state control, and trust me, folks, I am not arguing for Saddam Hussein. I'm trying just to make a point. You took away the despot, the tyrant that was controlling the people, and they had no self-control because they weren't controlled by the Bible or God. And so you did not end up with liberty or freedom, you just ended up with a different form of tyranny despotism, violence, any despotism, violence.
Speaker 1:The problem in America is we created this nation based on the principles of Christ. We founded this as a Christian republic, right, as Judge Nathaniel Freeman said, back in the very early 1800s 1801, 1803, somewhere in there. Right, this wasn't a pagan secular republic like Rome. This was a Christian republic, secular republic like Rome. This was a Christian republic. Well, we got all this liberty because our founders based it on the principles of Christ and the people had a moral restraint. And, yeah, there's been ups and downs, but what we've done now is we've taken God and the Bible away and that liberty has just turned into mob democracy, freedom, and so we don't have any moral restraint anymore. So we have these free institutions that were based on morality and virtue, which can only come, as Speaker Winthrop said, from God. He's the only authoritative rule. Well, we took God away, but we still wanted the liberty. But you can't have it. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:One more little section, and I'll leave you all alone for today. This is from a different section. I don't know what the title of it is. This is Influence of Manners Upon the Maintenance of Democratic Republic in the United States. It may be asserted that in the United States, no religious doctrine displays the slightest hostility to Democratic and Republican institutions. The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws and the human intellect flows onward in one sole current.
Speaker 1:I happened to be staying in one of the largest towns in the Union when I was invited to attend a public meeting which had been called for the purpose of assisting the Poles and of sending them supplies of arms and money. I found two or three thousand persons collected in a vast hall which had been prepared to receive them. In a short time, a priest in his ecclesiastical robes advanced to the front of the hustings. The spectators rose and stood uncovered whilst he spoke in the following terms Almighty God, the God of armies, thou who didst strengthen the hearts and guide the arms of our fathers when they were fighting for the sacred rights of national independence.
Speaker 1:Rights of national independence. Thou who didst make them triumph over a hateful oppression and hast granted to our people the benefits of liberty and peace. Turn, o Lord, a favorable eye upon the other hemisphere. Pitifully look down upon that heroic nation which is even now struggling as we did in the former time and for the same rights which we defended with our blood. Thou who didst create man in the likeness of the same image. Let not tyranny mar thy work and establish inequality upon the earth.
Speaker 1:Almighty God, do thou watch over the destiny of the poles and render them worthy to be free. May thy wisdom direct their counsels and may thy strength sustain their arms. Set forth thy terror over their enemies. Scatter the powers which take counsel against them and vouchsafe that the injustice which the world has witnessed for fifty years be not consummated in our time. O Lord, who holdest alike the hearts of nations and of men in thy powerful hand, rise up allies to the sacred cause of right. Arouse the French nation from the apathy in which its rulers retain it. Let it go forth again to fight for the liberties of the world. Lord, turn not thou thy face from us and grant that we may always be the most religious as well as the freest people on the earth. Almighty God, hear our supplications this day. Save the poles. We beseech thee in the name of thy well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died upon the cross for the salvation of men. Amen. The whole meeting responded Amen, with devotion.
Speaker 1:We need to be a praying nation again, folks, and not just in the privacy of our own homes and not just in our own churches. We need to be a praying nation. Publicly, we need men who rule in fear of God, not women and not men who don't fear God. We need men who rule in fear of God, who pray, who turn to God for guidance. We need to be a nation that looks to God and Jesus Christ in all that we do, that looks to God and Jesus Christ in all that we do, and seeks to save the lost with whatever time God gives us left. God bless y'all. God bless your marriages, if you're married. God bless your families. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, we'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks Looking forward to it.