Jordan Hall: Spiritual Warfare, Discipleship & the Wartime Generation
Date: September 3, 2025
Source: Conversation with College Tennis Coach (28, new father)
Context: Discussion of Jordan's viral tweet about wartime footing for younger generations
Core Thesis: We Are at Spiritual War
The Fundamental Reality:
"Everything matters. Every choice you make, every action you take, every breath, every word is ultimately laden with consequence. It's either towards God or away from God. There is no neutral and there is no irrelevant."
War as Maximum Stakes:
"We are we've been raised in a really really remarkably lazy and cowardly context. We're by far the laziest and most cowardly human beings that have ever been developed... But that's not how life works. Life is in fact actually for all the marbles."
The Nature of Modern Warfare:
"The enemy isn't going to kill your kids. He is going to get you to do that or get them to kill themselves or cause you to never have kids or cause them to choose mere survival over capital L life."
Fifth Generation Warfare & Spiritual Reality
Evolution of Warfare:
"As we have moved forward in the art of war we have more and more spiritualized the way that we go about waging war by necessity... The centerpiece as you move through the arc of fifth generation warfare, it actually becomes isomorphic with what we would have called spiritual warfare in a very beautiful way."
Diffuse Causation:
"There's no connection, no causal linear connection between me and the actual event. And yet there is a connection between me and the actual event... Identity becomes diffuse. Causation becomes diffuse."
The Ultimate Target:
"If I can get you to become confused about what your values are and to lose track of what you value or even what it means to value anything, then that's a perfectly great way to do it and maybe actually much more effective than trying to blow you up."
The Collapse of Modern Illusions
The End of the Bubble:
"We were able to be inveigled to believe that under our own power we could achieve the values that we value and we could in fact discern and maintain those values. And it turns out all three of those are false."
Material Conditions Catching Up:
"For a very long time thousands of years there has been a conversation about the end of the world and also a conversation about the necessity of repent and to sin no more. But now the material conditions are catching up with the spiritual proposition."
The AI Ultimatum:
"There is very little choice left but to fully commit yourself to discipleship and I would say in fact there is no choice left... You will be consumed body mind and soul by AI if you are not able to cleave utterly to Christ."
Discipleship as Warfare
The Proper Footing:
"The actual ordinary proper footing of a Christian in discipleship is war. And I should say just to hearken back and not stupid war. Let us not endeavor to wage the war against powers and principalities stupidly."
The Only Way Through:
"There is only one possible place. There's only one safety. There's only one peace and there's only one way... I'm not saying that doctrinally. I'm saying it practically."
The Threefold Adversary:
"Your adversary is twofold. I guess three-fold. One is your sinful nature, your own weakness, and the way that you will get in your own way. The second is the adversary, right? Constantly trying to separate you from what is right. And then the third is the complexity of the reality that you find yourself in."
Community, Communion & the Kingdom
The Hierarchy of Reality:
"Society is actually necrotic. Society is the undead. It's the zombie... There's community, but community is what you call it when society is what's looking at it. The real thing is communion. Communion is real."
Living in the Kingdom Now:
"As society falls apart, if we fall back on communion and we enter into proper communion, we are actually living in the kingdom. Meaning we are not having to say we're living lives of profound being deprived. Rather, we can actually live lives that are quite nice."
Universal Brotherhood:
"Every single other person on the planet who has that same vision is intrinsically on the same team. It's not just you and the next 100 people that you know and are close with. It's you and me intrinsically."
Education & Child-Rearing in Wartime
The Fundamental Error:
"The notion of public education is actually just simply a category error... Education is part of that third term [the sacred]. Parenting and family is part of that third term. The state should not parent the state should not educate."
The True Goal:
"What we're trying to do is we're trying to cultivate humans, whole humans, whole humans in right relationship with God... Whole humans have things like the ability to discern. They have the ability to hear when they are called."
Three Stages of Development:
"Birth to about seven which is really about being descended fully into your body... Seven to 14 is this part where you begin to step into being a villager... 14 to 21, this is now when you're becoming useful. This is when you're actually beginning to heed your vocation."
The Church's Responsibility:
"Education belongs in the church. That's it. So sorry church, you have to... actually take on the task of education wholly, which probably looks a lot more like a homeschool co-op than anything else."
The Church's Expanded Role
Recovery of the Commons:
"Churches are going to have to help members of that church have a place to live... Churches will have to set the context in which the economy is taking place so that the economy is properly ordered. This is a profound revival."
Medieval Restoration:
"It's going to scare the heck out of Protestants because it's going to look a lot like the medieval magisterium... because it is. That's the last time we had that... The last time we actually had it."
Proper Ordering:
"The sacred is more fundamental than the secular... It is ultimately God's property. It's ultimately God's money. I'm living in God's house. Like all of this is that way. And we have to order it that fashion. It's not a matter of choice."
Generational Calling
The Moses Generation (Gen X):
"Moses, I we we remember slavery in Egypt... We can come to the top of the mountain. We can see the promised land, but we're not going to cross over into it."
The Joshua Generation (Millennials/Gen Z):
"The ferry generation is maybe the Joshua generation. You're going to be crossing the river and you're going to be entering it and but you're going to be fighting to establish that promised land."
The Ferryman Calling:
"Maybe my vocation and our generation's vocation is much more this ferryman vocation of helping us get from one side of the river to the other without capsizing."
Practical Wisdom
Beauty as Warfare:
"Creating beauty is an act of war in this frame that we're talking about... Being a steward of beauty is an act of war... I prefer my act of war being to be a steward of beauty and a creator of beauty and trying to revivify my world in that way than having to storm Normandy."
Divine Guidance Over Strategy:
"Hear what God is telling you to do and then do it with absolute obedience. Surrender into that. The faster and better and faster and stronger you can, the better it will be."
Local Focus:
"Focus locally. Flesh and blood is more trustworthy than virtual. The net is useful, but don't overindex. If you can build a community of a hundred who are made of the right stuff, you'll have a real chance."
The Stakes
Everything Matters:
"Any moment of indifference is a moment of giving ground to the adversary which ultimately means a moment where victory is his not yours."
The Gift of Difficulty:
"The simple act, the simplest possible act of raising a child, conceiving a child, just dating a child, giving birth to a child, raising a child is perfectly infinitely loaded laden with difficulty. It's the simplest possible act and the most difficult possible act simultaneously because it's the most meaningful act."
The Ultimate Reality:
"The mission field is here. The mission field is now... The eternal is eternal for a reason. Orient yourself by that. Live by that. Notice that that has always told you that everything is completely laden with full stake."
Key Insight: The Moment of Kairos
This conversation reveals Hall's understanding that we are living in a moment of kairos - qualitative, meaningful time where everything is compressed into ultimate significance. The comfortable illusions of material progress are collapsing, forcing a return to the eternal spiritual realities that have always been true but could be temporarily ignored during the "bubble" of the last 75 years.
His framework integrates ancient Christian wisdom with cutting-edge analysis of technological and civilizational change, arguing that authentic discipleship is not just spiritually necessary but practically essential for survival and flourishing in the emerging world.