A disturbing video of prominent journalist Glenn Greenwald circulated online this weekend has left me scratching my head. Also, Gallup has found that Republican support for same-sex so-called marriage is the lowest it has been in 30 years. In this episode, I talk about how Christians should respond to these developments.
00:00:54.380I like to remind you sometimes at the beginning of the week that the only thing we have to do today is the will of God.
00:01:02.580That is a quote from Elizabeth Elliott that has given me so much comfort.
00:01:06.480And I like to add on to a quote by Elizabeth Elliott by saying that all we really are responsible to do is the next right thing in faith with excellence and for the glory of God.
00:01:19.560So those last stipulations are ones that we've added on over the years.
00:01:24.320Do the next right thing in faith with excellence and for the glory of God.
00:01:28.900That can be small private acts of obedience.
00:01:32.580That can be changing diapers and washing dishes, sending an email.
00:01:37.760All of this can be done in a way that is excellent, that is glorifying to God.
00:01:44.260And that is all we are really responsible to do.
00:01:46.860And the Holy Spirit helps us do those things.
00:01:49.800All right, before we get into the contents of today's episode, I just want to invite all of you women out there to join my push-up challenge for the month of June.
00:01:59.140I'm not even really sure how I started this whole thing.
00:02:02.300I'm certainly not the first one to do a push-up challenge.
00:02:04.480I think other people have done this in the past.
00:02:06.360But I started recording some of my workouts that I do with my husband and started posting about them.
00:03:37.420I find when I am able to do difficult physical feats, it gives me endurance and confidence in other areas of my life.
00:03:47.560It reminds me that I can do difficult things that I didn't think that I was able to accomplish.
00:03:52.960So it's just a fun thing for us to do together.
00:03:56.160Go ahead and join in, and you can find the details of this challenge on Instagram sometime later today.
00:04:03.200All right, it is June, which means that to some people out there, it is Pride Month, where you celebrate sexual identities that do not align with God's Word.
00:04:18.140And of course, as Christians, we don't celebrate that.
00:04:21.200We understand that all people, no matter their sinfulness, no matter their temptation, are made in the image of God.
00:04:29.480Therefore, they all have innate worth, and everyone has a soul that will live forever.
00:04:34.780And the only way for any soul, for any person to be saved is through Jesus Christ.
00:04:40.280Jesus says in John 14, 6, that I am the way, the truth, the life.
00:04:45.920No one comes to the Father except through me.
00:04:48.940Ephesians 2, as we'll talk about more today later in this episode, makes clear that everyone is dead in their sins apart from Christ.
00:04:57.220Everyone, there aren't different levels of being dead.
00:05:01.580No matter what your sin is, everyone is dead in their sin apart from Christ.
00:05:06.720And we all need to be saved by Jesus, by grace through faith.
00:05:10.300I was reading Colossians 1 this morning, where God through Paul says that all of us were once hostile in mind.
00:06:24.340But I am going to basically wipe the rest of humanity off of the face of the earth.
00:06:31.780But after this, God promised that he was never going to flood the earth again.
00:06:36.760And I love this passage, too, because it just flies in the face of so much of the climate change propaganda that says that, oh, the world is going to burst in flames.
00:06:49.360We're not even going to have an earth to live on.
00:06:52.640But God promises that he is sovereign over the existence of the earth and that the world is not going to end apart from God's sovereign will.
00:07:04.420And then we also read about the rainbow.
00:07:08.740So Genesis 9, 14 through 15, when I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.
00:07:23.100The Noahic covenant creates the stable, natural world necessary for God's ultimate redemptive work through the birth of his son, Jesus Christ, sustaining humanity so that the Messiah could enter history to save his people.
00:07:38.540And that specific quote is from Ligonier Ministries.
00:07:42.040Hebrews 8, 6 says, but as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises.
00:07:55.960So the promises, the covenant that is made to God's people in the Old Testament, that is just a foreshadowing of the new and better covenant that we get to enter into as God's people through Jesus Christ.
00:08:09.220So when you see the rainbows around this month, remember that the rainbow is God's, that it is a sign of redemption, that it is a sign of his mercy, that even though mankind has been and still is in so many ways so wicked, that God in his mercy has promised to never flood the earth again.
00:08:31.500And he has made a way through Jesus Christ for us to be redeemed from our wickedness because Jesus paid the price for that on the cross.
00:08:43.420Also, remember, there is a difference between the rainbow flag that is so wrongly and wickedly used as a symbol of depravity when it comes to the quote unquote pride flag and the actual rainbow.
00:08:56.820And it's just so fitting in a very dark way that the pride flag has six colors and an actual rainbow that God created as a symbol of his promises has seven colors.
00:09:11.980So right there, you see a distinction between an earthly counterfeit and God's real genuine goodness.
00:09:20.640All right, now we've got to get into, I guess, a related story about a very prominent journalist by the name of Glenn Greenwald and a video that was released of him over the weekend.
00:09:35.600And in the story, for me, it really isn't as much the video itself as the reaction to the video by many prominent Christian conservatives.
00:09:46.100And this next segment won't be me throwing anyone under the bus that's on our quote unquote side when it comes to, you know, politics and culture.
00:09:56.020But just giving my perspective of what I think our response should be to a scandal like that as Christians first and foremost.
00:10:14.500We're in a little bit of a different setup today.
00:10:16.560As you can tell, I'm recording remotely.
00:10:18.200I have to look at my phone for my ads that producer Brie sent me.
00:10:22.040So our first ad for the day is from Fellowship Home Loans.
00:10:27.400So if you are looking into buying a home or refinancing, you want to make sure that you are working with people that you can really trust, that your values align with, because this is a huge decision.
00:10:40.160You are talking about the handling of your hard-earned money.
00:10:44.580And it's really important that the people that are helping you with that care about integrity.
00:10:50.520And the people at Fellowship Home Loans, they are trying to glorify God in everything they do.
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00:11:43.340Glenn Greenwald, a lot of you probably know of him maybe because he's been a guest on, say, Megyn Kelly's podcast.
00:11:57.320I love Megyn Kelly's show or the Tucker Carlson's podcast.
00:12:01.740I remember watching him as a guest on Tucker's show when Tucker was on Fox.
00:12:05.940He was always very articulate, but he's not someone that I follow super closely, but he is regarded by many as a renowned journalist.
00:12:14.600He is best known for his stance as what I would call like a free speech absolutist.
00:12:21.140He is known for his criticism of governments and governmental agencies, including in the U.S.
00:12:27.100He really sees the U.S. in many ways and United States institutions as regularly violating free speech rights.
00:12:35.260In 2013, he published a series of articles in The Guardian that revealed facts about British and American surveillance programs that he found in classified documents that had been leaked to him by Edward Snowden.
00:12:48.320So all of this might be ringing a bell just a little bit.
00:12:51.180He is also very anti-Israeli government.
00:12:54.120He has also condemned J.K. Rowling for her advocacy for women and girls.
00:12:58.960So you could probably say that he is heterodox in a lot of ways.
00:13:03.420Now, he used to be seen as squarely on the left.
00:13:05.760For example, several years ago, Rachel Maddow praised him as like the most fearless journalist on the left.
00:13:14.320But because he has been critical, really, of various administrations, he has in the last few years been almost exclusively featured by and platformed by more conservative-leaning shows.
00:13:29.080Now, over the weekend, and by the way, as I said, I'm recording this remotely, so my setup is a little bit different, and I've got all of my notes on my phone.
00:13:37.680And this is a story and the theological interpretation of this story.
00:13:42.440I just want to make sure that I am getting exactly correct, so you might notice I'm looking down a little bit more just to make sure that I'm following my notes.
00:13:49.560Exactly. Over the weekend, a video was leaked that depicted Greenwald, who is openly gay, engaged in very degrading sexual acts with what appears to be a male prostitute.
00:14:03.920You do not need to watch the video, but I read a summary.
00:14:07.540I saw a couple screenshots of what happened, and those screenshots weren't even, like, graphically of any sexual acts that were going on.
00:14:15.400And we won't get into the graphic details, but in the video, you see that Greenwald is scantily clad in women's clothing and is videoed doing what seems like some kind of humiliation ritual that includes him paying a male prostitute via PayPal.
00:14:33.900That's what appears to be happening, okay?
00:14:56.100He said they were published without my knowledge or consent, and its publication was therefore criminal.
00:15:01.800Though we do not yet know exactly who is responsible, we are close to knowing, and the motive was a maliciously political one, he says.
00:15:10.760He goes on to say, as for the content of the videos, okay, this is an important part of the statement.
00:15:16.600He says, as for the content of the videos, I have no embarrassment or regret about them.
00:15:22.940The videos depict consenting adults engaged in intimate actions in their private lives.
00:15:29.580They all display fully consensual behavior, harming nobody.
00:15:35.140And then he goes on to say, it can be uncomfortable when this happens.
00:15:39.620The only wrongdoing, he says, is the criminal and malicious publication of the videos in an attempt to malign perceived political enemies in advance of political agenda.
00:15:49.940And, you know, he emphasizes again, this is private life.
00:15:53.080Some people are going to be judgmental about my private life, but I'm going to continue doing my work and doing what I do.
00:15:58.280Now, as I said in the beginning, I would really have no reason to talk about this if it weren't for the response from so many conservatives, including conservative Christians afterward.
00:16:14.220And I'm not going to go through all of the people who said various things.
00:16:18.760A lot of them are people that I consider friends, that I respect a lot, that I will continue to respect a lot.
00:16:24.820But I did think it was odd and a little surprising that one after another, these conservative commentators very vehemently came to his defense, all saying almost the exact same thing, that whatever he does in his private life is none of our business.
00:16:41.960He does good work, he does good work, we should respect that, blackmail is wrong.
00:16:46.740And there also seems to be this idea among a lot of his defenders that this was some kind of conspiracy against them, that someone out there, Israel, it seems to be implied by a lot of people, leaked this footage to embarrass him and to hurt his credibility and to stop him from reporting the truth.
00:17:07.640And I just found the sudden and overwhelming and very uniform defense of him after this very, very disturbing video came out by many commentators, including Christian commentators, to be strange and very confusing.
00:17:29.560It almost feels like I missed some kind of like mass email that said, OK, these are the conservative Christian talking points after the Glenn Greenwald sex tape releases.
00:17:40.440Now, I'm not super familiar with Greenwald beyond him being, you know, a guest on some of the shows that I've watched.
00:17:46.300I've always found him, you know, very interesting, articulate.
00:17:50.100But I had no idea that so many conservatives view him as absolutely indispensable to the cause to the point to where they have to defend him after something this grotesque comes out.
00:18:03.840After this level of degeneracy is published, they felt the need to like rush to his defense.
00:18:33.360Certainly it is possible to appreciate what someone does professionally and dislike what they do personally.
00:18:39.780We do this with artists, for example, all the time, but I still can't get on board fully with that perspective in this situation.
00:18:49.460Like at the same time, we don't feel the need to rush to defend all of those whose personal lives we condemn.
00:18:58.200So like when an athlete or a celebrity does something terrible, we might ignore it or we might condemn it and continue appreciating their professional contributions or we might condemn it and then stop supporting them altogether.
00:19:11.920But you don't typically see conservative Christians going out of their way to straight up defend that celebrity when they say or do something that is awful.
00:19:23.720So like when a football player beats his girlfriend, for example, this unfortunately happens like with some regularity and the tape is leaked.
00:19:32.320You don't see a lot of people, Christian or not, rushing out and declaring none of our business, like private life, this private life doesn't affect how he plays.
00:19:56.020So I'm just confused about why we would feel such an urge to so passionately defend someone engaged in the very behavior that we as conservative Christians always condemn.
00:20:45.360And like does anyone have any concern for their well-being while their dad is apparently using hard drugs with a prostitute?
00:20:55.420Like I think it is worth asking that question.
00:20:58.420It's not a private matter when there are possibly kids that are affected.
00:21:04.720And I'm not saying that Greenwald doesn't love his sons.
00:21:08.120I don't know, you know, like what the rest of his fatherhood looks like.
00:21:11.700But to act like this is just a compartmentalized private act that no one should have any interest in whatsoever, I'm just not so sure that's true.
00:21:21.760Also, like we can note that he's got a strange past.
00:21:24.940He met his now deceased partner when he was 38 on a trip to Brazil and his partner was only 19.
00:21:32.340It's reported that just a few days later they moved in together and, you know, got quote unquote married.
00:21:38.560Like I would think that was weird if that were a man and a girl, a 38-year-old man, a 19-year-old girl.
00:21:58.180I'm just not sure that this whole thing, that the publication of this video was an accident.
00:22:02.680Like my theory, and I saw that others had the same thought, is that both the recording and the release of this video were done with Glenn's knowledge.
00:22:14.040I mean, clearly, as was reportedly depicted in the video, Glenn is into degradation.
00:22:20.120And this is also known, I know this is like very disturbing, but it's important as we're looking at the reaction to this.
00:22:28.220It's also known as a humiliation fetish.
00:22:30.400And the only reason I even know that phrase is because the conversations, a lot of you probably remember these, with a journalist by the name of Genevieve Gluck.
00:22:42.240They've done a lot of good work when it comes to calling out how gender ideology and men who identify as women have infiltrated and infected women's spaces and hurt girls as a consequence of that.
00:22:56.240Two episodes with her that I really encourage you to listen to, and we can put them in the description of this episode so you can click on them.
00:23:05.040Episodes 636 of Relatable, 702 of Relatable.
00:23:08.920Those two conversations with her reveal extremely disturbing research into the kind of pornography and chat rooms that fuel much of the transgender trend among men.
00:23:21.240It's something called forced feminization or, again, just very disturbing phrases, but also called sissy porn.
00:23:27.880And common in this porn is the theme of dressing up as a woman and being forced to do humiliating and degrading things.
00:23:37.020And that seems to be what is happening in this scenario, in this video.
00:23:42.140I'm not saying that Greenwald is transgender.
00:23:44.440I'm saying that it seems like he's into some really dark stuff.
00:23:49.660And he was filmed not just performing certain acts, but also paying this prostitute via PayPal with an account that looks to be linked to his own name.
00:24:00.540And all of this was done on what doesn't appear to be like a hidden camera, but a camera that the prostitute is holding right in front of Greenwald.
00:24:08.020Like, so you are telling me that the journalist who arguably knows more about cybersecurity and cyber privacy than anyone else on Earth accidentally got caught paying a prostitute via his own PayPal account?
00:24:49.520And while many of them were defending his actions, they were very passionately insisting that everyone separate his sexual depravity from his public work.
00:25:05.040And, like, neatly compartmentalize it over here and pretend like it has no effect whatsoever on anything over there.
00:25:12.200And I'm just not sure I can hop on to that.
00:26:55.980And I'm sincerely interested in y'all's thoughts and comments about this.
00:26:59.420But I don't know that I understand why.
00:27:02.520If Hunter Biden's drug use and his use of a prostitute mattered, this doesn't matter.
00:27:10.180Now, to be fair, Glenn Greenwald never went after Hunter Biden.
00:27:14.860And actually, he said, like, oh, I don't think that we should be going after him.
00:27:18.480So I'm not even saying it's hypocrisy on his part.
00:27:21.000But a lot of the people just so quickly defending Glenn Greenwald were some of the people going after Hunter Biden and his private behavior.
00:27:29.880I don't really understand why, if Sam Britton's personal life mattered, Greenwald's doesn't.
00:27:37.740Now, Sam Britton was the, quote, unquote, non-binary guy who worked in the energy department, who stole women's clothing and taught BDSM sessions at a college.
00:28:33.500I think they're poisonous for someone personally.
00:28:35.740I think they're poisonous for a family, for a community, and could have an effect absolutely on whatever entity a person is leading, including Trump.
00:28:45.060His reported adultery, his reported objectification of women in the past is sinful.
00:28:49.660I've said many times, I hope that Trump becomes a Christian if he hasn't already recently.
00:28:54.580And that I wish that he didn't have the stuff in the past that he does.
00:28:58.740I've never been one to shy away from that or pretend that that didn't happen or excuse that.
00:29:03.320But, one, Trump was running for president as one of only two options.
00:29:08.160The other option in every case was worse in every way.
00:29:11.860His opponent in all of these elections has also had moral depravity in their past and, on top of that, advocated for absolutely murderous and destructive policies, policies that I don't align with, that I think are bad for children, bad for babies, bad for family, bad for the economy.
00:29:30.040Two, as far as I know, Trump wasn't engaging in those kinds of sexual sins when he was running for office.
00:29:35.680Three, and here's where we'll get into some theology about all of this.
00:30:20.760And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.
00:30:30.240We are justified, made right before God.
00:32:02.820His lust, so even the thoughts that he has in his mind of being unfaithful to his wife and lusting after another woman, those are sins.
00:32:11.260And consequential actions are also sinful.
00:32:13.660But a man desiring a woman, in principle, is not inherently disordered.
00:32:20.660It is natural for a man to desire a woman.
00:32:23.340And it is by self-control and love for his wife and Holy Spirit-empowered discipline that he avoids lust and temptation to be unfaithful to the one woman to whom he has committed in marriage.
00:32:37.300But it is unnatural, inherently unnatural for a man to desire a man or for a woman to desire a woman.
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00:50:43.680There's a new study out via Gallup that shows that Republican support of gay marriage declines for the first time in decades.
00:50:57.120Also, if you're new here, I say, quote on quotes, marriage, or I say so-called marriage because God created marriage and he defines it one way.
00:51:09.100So it is not possible, actually, for two men or two women to be married.
00:51:15.780Ten years after the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision made same-sex marriage legal nationwide,
00:51:22.200new Gallup polling that was published May 29th shows Republican support has hit its lowest point since Gallup began tracking the sentiment 29 years ago.
00:51:33.180The numbers suggest that Republican acceptance after the court ruling may have been short-lived,
00:51:37.880with many conservatives now reverting toward a traditional biblical view of marriage.
00:51:42.520So just 41% of Republicans now back so-called same-sex marriage down sharply from 55% in 2021 to 2022.
00:52:44.160We need pastors to be out there simply preaching the Bible.
00:52:47.680You don't have to get political to preach through Genesis 1.
00:52:50.300Public support, both Democrat and Republican, started at 27% in 1996 and gradually increased to 42% by 2004.
00:53:00.740In 2011, a majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage for the first time.
00:53:06.260After the Obergefell ruling, public support jumped to 61%.
00:53:09.860Republicans hit majority support of same-sex, quote-unquote, marriage twice, 55% in 2021 and 2022.
00:53:19.680Democrat support has reached an all-time high.
00:53:22.000Here's what's crazy about this is that it makes so much sense why Republicans have moved the way that we have.
00:53:28.880It doesn't make sense why Democrats have moved the way that they have.
00:53:32.660Because over the past few years, there has been a movement to simply reveal the kind of indoctrination that is going on in schools.
00:53:42.340We have seen the grossness and depravity of something like Drag Queen Story Hour.
00:53:48.300We have seen the propaganda in books, in school libraries, that not only encourages kids to start thinking about their sexuality at a young age,
00:53:57.720but to start questioning if they are born in the right body.
00:54:02.480Okay, we were sold several years ago, before Obergefell, the modern family depiction of what gay unions looked like,
00:54:11.740that these were just two people who loved each other, just like a man and a woman,
00:54:15.360who wanted to start a family and adopt poor kids from Thailand and to be able to, you know, be there in the hospital while their loved one is dying.
00:54:25.200That's how it was advertised to us that it is the exact same as, you know, like, leave it to Beaver, Cleaver, family home in the 1950s.
00:54:35.220The two people just happened to be in, you know, the same sex.
00:54:38.120But since Obergefell to now, which is only 10 years, 2015 to now, we have watched it go from that depiction
00:54:45.640to men dressed in push-up bras and fishnet tights reading stories to children on the taxpayer dime in libraries
00:54:54.740and parents getting their children taken out of their custody so the state can allow the child to mutilate their genitals