Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 31, 2020


Ep 207 ｜ The Impeachment Charade Needs to End ｜ Guest： Sen. Marsha Blackburn


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

175.26605

Word Count

5,863

Sentence Count

334


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. If you are watching this on YouTube, you can
00:00:06.420 see that we are in a different set. I'm actually in studio, in Pat Gray's studio. By the way,
00:00:13.420 thank you to Pat Gray for allowing me to use your space. Today, I'm going to be interviewing
00:00:19.060 Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee. She is awesome. We're going to be talking about
00:00:24.840 all kinds of things from women and conservatism and how we can boldly stand up for our views.
00:00:30.200 And we're also going to touch on impeachment just a little bit, because if you haven't noticed,
00:00:35.140 there is a lot of craziness that's going on. And I'm going to flesh that out maybe just a little
00:00:41.900 bit after the interview, because we're going to have some time after the interview. And then I'm
00:00:46.200 going to answer some of the questions that you guys sent me via Instagram. Hopefully, I'll actually
00:00:51.800 have time to answer more than one. I always take them. And then I'm like, oh, I'm going to answer,
00:00:56.920 you know, all 15 of these questions. But then I answer one and it kind of gets me down this rabbit
00:01:02.040 trail of explaining this whole thing. And so I'm not actually able to answer as many as I would like.
00:01:06.740 But I will try. I will try if I can to be concise and actually answer a few of your questions. Okay,
00:01:13.020 before I actually get into this interview with the senator, I want to play you a little clip of
00:01:19.300 Senator Marsha Blackburn. So you have some context just in case you don't know exactly all of the
00:01:25.680 things that she's done or who she is. I want to give you a little bit of context about who I'm about to
00:01:30.440 speak to. They've told us what their entire purpose is. It's to relitigate the 2016 election,
00:01:37.040 to keep him off the ballot in 2020, to make certain that the American people don't have the
00:01:43.080 opportunity to vote for him again. I thought Adam Schiff's remarks were astounding on the second day
00:01:49.140 in his opening comments. Basically what he said when he was saying, you know, we can't trust he won't
00:01:56.820 cheat again. We can't trust that the ballot box will be protected in the election fair. Basically he was
00:02:04.340 saying, we don't trust you American people. You messed up in 2016 and voted for the wrong guy. We're
00:02:11.160 not going to give you that opportunity in 2020. We're going to change the process and control who
00:02:18.320 you can vote for, who has the ballot box, who has the election. Senator Blackburn, thank you so much
00:02:25.260 for joining me. I'm delighted to be with you and delighted to join your audience. I have a daughter
00:02:33.000 in law who is a big fan of yours. Oh, well, thank you so much. I appreciate that a lot. I know you have
00:02:38.820 a lot going on on Capitol Hill right now, but I want to, before we get into all the proceedings and the
00:02:45.380 craziness that is going on, I want to hear a little bit about your background and how you got where you
00:02:52.920 worn out. Yes. And you know, I, I say that God uses non-traditional leaders and that you should
00:03:00.860 always accept an open door because you never know where that door is going to lead and that we have
00:03:07.460 to realize he's going to chart our path that we don't do that for ourselves. So I think that good
00:03:14.060 preparation is something that helps open doors. This wasn't an intentional path for me, but I was
00:03:22.400 prepared and accepted lots of leadership positions through my church, through my community, working
00:03:29.260 with my children in their school. And you know, it's so interesting because you put all of those
00:03:35.220 experiences together and it really becomes your life equity, your stock in yourself. And that is
00:03:44.980 something that I think women have the ability to bring a diverse wealth of experience to the public
00:03:54.600 sector marketplace, if you will, and put those skills to work because you work as a wife and a mom and in
00:04:03.700 your career, and you are there as a volunteer working with groups and with your children. And then when you
00:04:11.740 want to move into public service, you think in terms of how that informs your view. So in my opinion,
00:04:19.520 if you want good, dependable, thoughtful legislators, it's going to be someone like a conservative mom who
00:04:28.380 has a wealth of experience. One of the things that has not been lost on me throughout my career,
00:04:37.200 whether it was working in the private sector or moving to the public sector. I say fourth class
00:04:43.940 women, especially in Washington, D.C. Fourth women are treated, conservative women are treated like
00:04:51.000 fourth class citizens. You know, the press will go to a liberal woman, a liberal man, a conservative man,
00:04:59.180 and then finally they get around to a conservative woman. So many times what they'll do is treat those
00:05:07.260 conservative women as the voice of last resort. Now, why do you think that is? Obviously, we know most
00:05:13.900 of the media skews to the left, but why is it that they ignore conservative women even more than they
00:05:22.300 would a conservative man, in your opinion? I think they ignore a conservative woman because
00:05:28.540 they're fearful that there are millions of women across the country. Once they hear that conservative
00:05:35.240 message, they're going to say, yes, I agree with that. And especially when it comes to the issues of life
00:05:43.960 and women in the workplace, women that are balancing a lot of different interests and really multitasking
00:05:52.620 every single day through their life. And many times I have a term I use that is kind of a little bit
00:06:02.640 funny, a little catchy. I say that women of the left are kind of the can be the Stepford wives of
00:06:11.800 liberalism. And they have their one set of talking points. They say them the same way. They address
00:06:19.640 the issues the same way. You know, there are times when I was in the House of Representatives,
00:06:26.800 the women on the left side of the aisle would line up at the microphone and say the exact same thing the
00:06:34.040 same way. Or they all dress in white as a sign of protest or blue as a sign of protest, something of
00:06:44.420 that nature. And you just really don't see women who are independents and conservatives conducting
00:06:51.020 themselves that way. Right. I think that's a really interesting analogy, the Stepford wives, because
00:06:58.200 they are absolutely stunned when someone doesn't look the same way they do, when they don't act the
00:07:03.300 same way they do, when they don't regurgitate the same kind of talking points. It's almost like,
00:07:07.980 especially you said on the issue of life, they don't know, I've realized, how to confront someone
00:07:14.020 in a logical and a calm manner when it comes to an issue like abortion. They are really, I don't want
00:07:20.460 to generalize, but at least a lot of the pro-choice people on the left that I've talked to are extremely
00:07:25.540 emotional about the issue and are really unable to have a conversation with a woman who happens to have a
00:07:32.800 different point of view. It's always, well, you must be voting against your own interests. You must not
00:07:37.480 realize that the GOP has made you this footstool. You must not realize that you're just a tool of the
00:07:43.340 patriarchy. So for the women listening to this podcast who want to stick up for conservative
00:07:48.600 values, especially on issues of life, but they're constantly getting pummeled, not just by the media,
00:07:53.540 but maybe their own friends and family, what advice and encouragement do you have to them?
00:07:57.620 I tell them just to kind of get there, really spend some time distilling down what their approach
00:08:07.120 is on an issue. I look at it as saying, I believe this is an issue where science is on our side.
00:08:16.020 When people hear the heartbeat, when they see an ultrasound, and especially the new 3D ultrasounds,
00:08:24.020 that shows you that that is a life. It's not a blob. The 3D ultrasounds, you can look at that
00:08:31.120 precious baby in the womb, and you can see features, and you know if you have a boy or a girl coming.
00:08:38.260 So you go ahead and assign the name to that precious child, and you begin to pray over that child,
00:08:45.460 and to decorate a nursery for that child. So people make those kind of preparations
00:08:53.860 now in advance. So much of, and I will tell you, Allie Beth, with women who are my age,
00:09:02.620 now that they have children that are having babies, that has really changed a lot of minds. And I've had
00:09:08.140 some good, thoughtful conversations with friends of mine who are not political. They would say they're
00:09:14.620 a Democrat or an Independent, simply because that's what their parents were, and they changed their
00:09:20.840 issue on the issue of life. And they realize now that when you talk about the issue of abortion,
00:09:30.140 you're not talking about, is it pro-choice, pro-life? What you're talking about is, does that
00:09:37.900 mother, does that woman have the right to decide if that child that she is carrying is going to live
00:09:45.680 or die? Right. I think that conversation has changed tremendously over the past decade.
00:09:52.000 Right. I agree. And it's getting harder and harder to defend abortion for all the reasons that
00:09:56.540 you just listed. And so you're right. Conservative women have every reason to be
00:10:02.660 confident in that, yet it is a little bit intimidating sometimes when you kind of feel
00:10:07.200 like you are the only one with your views on an island of people who think differently than you do.
00:10:15.520 I want to touch on, because you only have a few minutes left, I want to touch on the craziness that's
00:10:21.040 happening on Capitol Hill with impeachment. My guess is that a lot of people listening to this podcast
00:10:26.720 want to know what's going on, but it feels like if you miss just one second, it's like a million
00:10:32.860 things have happened and you're already behind. And so you just get discouraged and you don't,
00:10:37.200 you don't listen, you kind of tune out and you just kind of wait for the end score.
00:10:40.760 So can you tell us a little bit, just briefly, what is going on currently with impeachment and kind
00:10:47.760 of where things stand? Absolutely. Today is going to be the last day of questions.
00:10:53.000 We've been through the house managers presenting their case, the president's team presenting their
00:10:59.980 case, and now we have moved to questions. We had eight hours of questions yesterday.
00:11:04.360 We'll have eight hours of questions today. It boils down to this. The house managers rushed through
00:11:11.960 their impeachment trial. When you look at what transpired with Nixon and that trial and Clinton,
00:11:19.020 that trial, you're talking about months and years involved in this process. The, the house of
00:11:25.880 Democrats spent a total of 78 days on this impeachment. They rushed it over to the, to the
00:11:32.320 Senate. And now what have they said? Oh, but wait, there's more. I call it their sham wow moment. And
00:11:39.700 they have one every few hours as they are changing their story. And they say, but wait, there's more.
00:11:46.960 And you in the Senate, you need to totally throw away decades of precedent and you need to call
00:11:54.800 witnesses and you need to expand the investigation. And quite frankly, when you look at the constitution,
00:12:03.300 that's not our job. That is not our responsibility. There is the impeaching, a verb, that action takes
00:12:13.120 place in the house. They arrive at articles of impeachment, a noun that they present to the
00:12:21.480 Senate. The Senate's job is to review the articles of impeachment and make a decision. If the house
00:12:30.980 has reached the evidentiary standard that is necessary to vote, to convict a president and to remove him
00:12:39.740 from office, they have not done that. They said they had an ironclad case that they had overwhelming
00:12:48.380 evidence. And now they come to us and what they're saying is, oh, but wait, there's more. We need you
00:12:55.440 to do an investigation and call additional witnesses. And people will say, well, you can't have a trial
00:13:02.320 without witnesses. So why not call witnesses? Right. Called 18 witnesses. We have had 12 of those
00:13:09.780 witnesses. We've heard from them by video. They didn't come in physically into the chamber. They
00:13:17.120 were brought by video. We don't need additional witnesses. We have heard from them and the house
00:13:25.660 managers have not made their case. So we will finish today. Tomorrow, we will take a vote on calling
00:13:33.400 more witnesses and then a vote on moving to final judgment and a vote on acquittal.
00:13:39.240 And Republicans are a little bit split on this, though. There are some Republican senators who are
00:13:45.960 saying, oh, well, maybe we do need some witnesses, which I think causes some of the public to say,
00:13:52.800 well, hey, maybe maybe we do. Maybe we need more information. Maybe we need more transparency.
00:13:57.880 But you wrote for the Tennessean that you don't think that's the right call at all, that we should
00:14:02.400 not be calling any more witnesses. Is that correct? That's correct. It is not in our constitutional
00:14:09.620 responsibility. It is outside of our responsibility. The impeachment has to be done by the house.
00:14:20.380 They are the ones that are charged with taking that action. We are charged with a review of the
00:14:27.560 articles that they send to us. So very different responsibilities. And we're not going to give
00:14:36.040 them an impeachment do-over. That is not our job. Now, if they want to go back to the house,
00:14:41.800 if they want to start another investigation, if they want to call other witnesses, they are within
00:14:48.560 their right to do that. But it is not our responsibility to do it. And quite frankly,
00:14:54.340 Allie Beth, when I talk to Tennesseans, they want this over with. They want us to go back and get back
00:15:00.380 to confirming federal judges and working on a transportation bill and rebuilding the military
00:15:08.060 and expanding 5G high-speed internet and technologies across the country. That is what they're wanting to
00:15:15.480 see done. And they're ready for this impeachment to be over with.
00:15:21.260 Quite frankly, I think that that is true of a lot of people. I know that's true of the people who
00:15:26.540 listen to this podcast. As much as they want to know what's going on, I think more than anything,
00:15:31.560 we just want it to be over with. It's not healthy. It's not good for the country to have a completely,
00:15:35.820 a totally partisan impeachment based really upon something that we can't even fully put our finger
00:15:43.340 on. So it just seems like a mess. And I appreciate you. I know you've taken some heat recently for
00:15:50.620 maybe not being, as what your critics would say, interested in the impeachment proceedings as they
00:15:55.540 think that you should be. But I think you're right. It needs to be over with. It needs to be
00:16:00.400 wrapped up. Yeah. And the thing is, when you're sitting there reading something that pertains to
00:16:05.840 the impeachment, but it's not something that the left approves of, then they're going to say,
00:16:11.860 oh, you're not paying attention to Adam Schiff and what he's saying on the floor. You know,
00:16:17.080 you're working to make certain that you do fair and impartial justice and that we have a fair proceeding.
00:16:24.580 Yes. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time out of all of this craziness and busyness to get
00:16:30.500 to talk to us. Is there anything final? Is there any place that you'd like to direct the audience to
00:16:36.540 go, maybe follow you on social media or whatever you'd like? Yeah, absolutely. We're on Instagram
00:16:41.380 and Twitter and Facebook. And we have a website, blackburn.senate.gov. The others, you can find me,
00:16:49.200 Marsha, M-A-R-S-H-A, Blackburn.
00:16:51.300 Well, thank you so much, Senator. I appreciate you taking the time.
00:16:55.700 Absolutely. Take care. Bye-bye.
00:16:58.540 Okay. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Hopefully we'll be able to have her back at some point.
00:17:05.120 There are so many things that I would like to pick her brain about. She really has
00:17:08.500 kind of been through the fire this past week. Leftist media saying that she is not as engaged
00:17:17.300 as they would like her to be. But of course, it really is just probably a targeting of a
00:17:23.000 conservative congresswoman because she is not staying in line where the leftist media would
00:17:30.080 like her to be, particularly on impeachment. So if you are wondering the ins and outs of impeachment
00:17:35.960 and you're really trying to wrap your brain around everything that's going on, which is something that
00:17:41.820 I think all of us are doing, but we don't have time, nor do we have the energy, nor do we have
00:17:46.800 the desire to sit and to watch these proceedings on the news every day. It's just, it's almost like
00:17:56.080 watching paint dry. And it's an exciting, not a good way, but an exciting point in history. And so we
00:18:02.500 should be in some ways enthusiastic about it, even if we're enthusiastically angry about the whole thing.
00:18:09.440 But it's really hard to stay engaged because it's so long, it's so drawn out. And like I was saying
00:18:14.820 to the senator, if you miss a day, you feel like you've missed the entire thing. So this is a totally
00:18:20.700 free ad that I am giving to another podcast. I am not being sponsored in any way, but I've been
00:18:27.140 listening to a podcast verdict by Ted Cruz with Ted Cruz, and it is Michael Knowles and Ted Cruz.
00:18:33.640 And after the impeachment proceedings, or after the trial that's happening in the Senate,
00:18:38.280 the senator sits down with Michael Knowles late at night to talk about everything that
00:18:44.860 happened that day. And they really are doing a great job of making it simple, like going down
00:18:50.720 to the basics, backing up. And that's what I love. I love when people don't take anything for granted
00:18:56.260 when they're explaining something, when they go to the very beginning and they say, this is why this
00:19:01.380 is happening. This is how this started. They explain Burisma. They explain Hunter Biden. They explain the
00:19:06.720 story that's really at the center of impeachment, what's happening, who the big players are,
00:19:11.420 what the arguments are. And so listen to verdict by Ted Cruz, hosted also by Michael Knowles. I think
00:19:18.420 you can probably find it anywhere you get your podcast. Again, that's not sponsored. I just found
00:19:23.660 it to be really helpful and getting my head around this whole thing, because I know this is my job
00:19:28.900 and I'm supposed to know everything that's going on in the news, but I'll just be honest with you.
00:19:33.940 I don't have time to know everything that's going on in the news. And so I sometimes rely when it
00:19:39.700 comes to particular subjects, I sometimes rely on the expertise of other people. And there's really
00:19:44.260 no better person to lend that expertise than Ted Cruz himself, because he obviously has a front row
00:19:49.400 seat to all of this stuff. So I highly recommend that one question that I got, and I'm going to answer
00:19:55.020 some questions from you guys. One question that I got is, what do you think the effects of
00:19:59.580 impeachment will be? So it's really hard to say because we don't know where it's going to go.
00:20:03.560 Is it going to wrap up quickly? Are they going to end up calling witnesses? Is it going to be
00:20:09.640 dragged out forever? It kind of, the effects of it kind of depend on everything that's going to
00:20:15.620 happen. Now, like I said with the Senator, I don't think that this is healthy. This is an entirely
00:20:20.720 partisan impeachment. So only one side is advocating for this. They haven't been able to lay out a clear
00:20:27.720 case of the crime that was actually committed that is impeachable. Again, we're talking about
00:20:33.740 whether or not the Democrats like what President Trump did in his call to Ukraine. We're not actually
00:20:39.620 talking about, we're not talking about a crime that is at least explicitly or clearly impeachable.
00:20:45.700 And that's why this whole thing is partisan. That's why Republicans, you'll hear them saying,
00:20:50.180 okay, this is just about the fact that they don't like President Trump. This is just about the fact
00:20:55.020 that they disagree with it. They don't like his personality. They even disagree with him on policy,
00:20:59.440 but it's not a matter of whether or not what he did was impeachable. Now, the president really
00:21:04.860 hasn't helped his defense very much because he has said, oh, no, no, there was nothing weird or
00:21:10.740 nothing sketchy, no quid pro quo at all with in my call to Ukraine, when really he probably should
00:21:16.900 have just owned the fact that maybe there was a quid pro quo. And that's not that big of a deal
00:21:21.020 because a lot of presidents and even vice presidents, as you will find out as you learn
00:21:25.860 more about the impeachment, vice presidents like Joe Biden, there are quid pro quos all the time.
00:21:31.300 So we could have just owned that. But instead, he has said, you know, there was nothing wrong with
00:21:35.280 my call at all, which makes his defense a little bit more difficult. So anyway, the effects of
00:21:41.480 impeachment are really going to depend on what happens and how long it lasts. Now, do I think that
00:21:46.840 this is politically smart for the Democrats? No, not really. Now, again, it's so hard to say
00:21:54.500 because it's really difficult to assess what public opinion will be when it comes to November.
00:22:01.920 There are people who are not paying attention at all right now who I guarantee you there are
00:22:06.320 millions and millions of people in the United States who have no idea that the president has
00:22:10.600 been impeached. And there are even more millions of people that have no idea why. And for those people,
00:22:16.280 maybe they're on the fence. Maybe they just by default don't like President Trump, because I
00:22:19.780 do think that's the default position when you've got so many cultural megaphones, you've got the
00:22:24.220 media, you've got social media, you've got Hollywood, you've got academia all telling you that President
00:22:28.520 Trump is terrible. I think the default position is to not like President Trump or at least be
00:22:32.620 skeptical of President Trump, which people are obviously free to have those feelings. But if you
00:22:36.760 are one of those people who maybe you don't really know a lot about what's going on in politics,
00:22:40.680 you don't really know a lot about what's going on in the political realm. But come September,
00:22:45.720 when you are thinking about, OK, who am I going to vote for? I really have no idea. And someone
00:22:50.200 tells you, are you really going to are you really going to vote for the guy who was impeached? Like,
00:22:54.280 you know, he was impeached, right? And most people don't know what impeached means. They just know it's
00:22:59.320 bad. They might even have memories of Bill Clinton. That was a bad thing. And they might even have memories
00:23:05.460 of Richard Nixon, which Richard Nixon wasn't actually impeached. But they might just think, oh,
00:23:11.860 yeah, that's a really bad thing. I'm not going to vote for the guy who was impeached. I'm going to
00:23:15.760 vote for Bernie Sanders, who has been consistent his whole life, apparently being consistent in and
00:23:21.300 of itself as a virtue is what we've heard from the left. But they might just be scared to vote for
00:23:27.340 Donald Trump because they hear this scary word of impeachment. They're not paying attention to
00:23:30.980 what's going on right now. They don't realize that he hasn't actually committed a crime that we know
00:23:35.260 of that is impeachable, at least not in this case. And so they'll just say, you know what? Yeah,
00:23:40.060 I'm not going to vote for a guy who was impeached. That I think is what Democrats are probably banking
00:23:45.140 on. They're not banking on the fact that Americans are paying attention right now. But the other side
00:23:50.000 of that is that people are paying attention and they're growing so tired of this. They're just
00:23:56.200 exhausted by the whole thing. And they see Democrats are wasting their time. They're wasting their money.
00:24:02.040 They're wasting their energy on something that is ultimately fruitless. Now, the other side of that
00:24:08.300 is that you also wonder, this is what I've wondered, is are Democrats trying to make Americans so
00:24:14.800 exhausted by this whole thing, so exhausted by the Trump hatred, so exhausted by Trump derangement
00:24:21.620 that we're just like, you know what? Get them out of office. Just I don't want to deal with this
00:24:26.120 anymore. You know what? Maybe we should just have a Democrat. Like, is that what they're banking on?
00:24:30.900 Is that what Democrats and Congress and Democrats and the media are banking on that they can just wear
00:24:35.380 us out so much with one thing after the next? Like, you'll notice that we're not even, we're not
00:24:41.960 talking about the whole Russia thing that they had talked about for two years straight. Now it's
00:24:46.380 impeachment. There's always a new scandal. And that's part of why, that's part of why people
00:24:52.480 aren't paying attention and aren't giving any credit to this whole impeachment thing, because they've been
00:24:57.580 talking about impeachment from the very beginning. And it's been like whack-a-mole. They've been trying to
00:25:02.220 find something to justify impeachment, and they think they finally found something, and they don't
00:25:08.720 actually have a good case. And so you've got a lot of people just rolling their eyes. I honestly think
00:25:14.200 that there's not a single person who supports President Trump who is not going to support
00:25:18.180 President Trump because of this whole impeachment thing, because it's entirely partisan. So that was
00:25:23.840 one question I got. What do I think the effects will be? There are a lot of different variables.
00:25:27.700 There are a lot of different possible outcomes. Ultimately, I don't think it'll make that much
00:25:32.900 of a difference come November. Also, depending on who the candidate is, if it's Joe Biden, like he's
00:25:38.660 going to be wrapped up in this controversy until November 2. And that's going to be like corruption
00:25:44.080 that we see versus corruption that Democrats see. Because remember, Joe Biden is at the center of all
00:25:49.880 of this. And Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, again, you can listen to the podcast verdict, and it will
00:25:54.840 break all of that down for you. But then if we have someone like Bernie Sanders, or people going
00:26:00.080 to be willing to vote for socialists, they might be okay with even corruption that they see from
00:26:05.720 Trump's side, because they just don't want a socialist in the White House. So anyway, hard to say how this
00:26:11.500 is going to affect November. Let me answer some more of your questions. One question is how, so this is
00:26:21.100 totally different. We're moving away from impeachment. I just take the random questions on Instagram. And
00:26:25.440 so we don't even have a theme anymore. We're shifting away from that. So one question is how to approach
00:26:30.260 believing friends immersed in self-love culture. So what this person means, I'm assuming by believing
00:26:35.640 friends, is Christian friends. How to approach Christian friends immersed in self-love culture. So
00:26:42.660 I think it is difficult because people who are immersed in self-love culture, it is a part of their
00:26:49.480 religion, whether they know it or not. For example, people who are obsessed with the Enneagram are very
00:26:54.620 defensive of the Enneagram. It is very much a part of like their spiritual life. They believe that it
00:27:00.040 has been a huge help in their, not just their self-development, but in their sanctification.
00:27:04.940 And if you question the roots of the Enneagram, if you question, you know, whether or not it's so
00:27:09.320 healthy that someone is depending entirely on the Enneagram to shape their worldview, they will,
00:27:14.700 and I'm not trying to be rude by saying this, but they will get defensive of it because they have
00:27:19.380 built so much of what they believe and how they see things on the Enneagram. And so you're really
00:27:26.640 kind of cracking at their foundation a little bit or what they believe to be their foundation. And so
00:27:31.300 the same way if you approach someone who is just immersed in self-love in general. So we're talking
00:27:35.760 about someone who believes that if it's a Christian, believes really that Jesus came and died so that
00:27:42.760 she could be confident, believes that Jesus wants her to believe in herself, that Jesus just wants
00:27:48.620 her to love herself more, that Jesus just wants to care for herself better, and that Jesus feels
00:27:55.320 badly for her and just wants to up her self-esteem. Well, that's not why Jesus came to die. That's not
00:28:01.580 the example that Jesus gave through his life, through his death, through his resurrection. The call
00:28:07.020 to be his disciples, to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, and to follow him.
00:28:11.320 And the command that he gives us to love our neighbor as ourselves is not a command to love
00:28:16.240 ourselves. I've said this so many times and I'll say it again, but when Jesus says to love your
00:28:20.320 neighbor as yourself, he is saying as yourself because as yourself is a given. Now, when I say
00:28:26.780 that self-love is a given, self-love is something that is natural. Self-love is something that we're
00:28:30.960 born with. I don't mean that we naturally look in the mirror every day and think that we're awesome,
00:28:36.060 think that we're talented, think that we're beautiful and Beyonce. That's not what I'm saying.
00:28:40.580 When Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, he is talking about the instinct that all of us
00:28:48.280 have for survival, to meet our own needs and to fulfill our own interests. That is something that
00:28:53.480 all of us are born with. If you've ever been around a baby, if you've ever been around a toddler,
00:28:57.680 you don't have to teach a toddler to steal. You don't have to teach a toddler to hoard. You have to
00:29:02.300 teach a toddler to share. You have to teach a toddler to say thank you. You have to teach a toddler
00:29:06.160 to think about other people. Why? Because we are naturally looking out for ourselves. We are naturally
00:29:11.660 looking to feed ourselves, to nourish ourselves, to make sure that we are taken care of. Even people who
00:29:18.880 tragically struggle with depression and suffer from thoughts of suicide and even who end up dying by
00:29:25.880 suicide, those people are looking out for their best interest in that they are looking to escape pain.
00:29:32.120 And so we naturally love ourselves in that we are naturally bent towards taking care of ourselves
00:29:38.500 and meeting our own needs. And so when Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, he is saying as
00:29:44.220 you look out for your own interests, as you look to feed yourself, to clothe yourself, to give yourself
00:29:49.920 a drink, as you look to give yourself shelter and look out for the things that you want and the things
00:29:55.320 that you need, think about other people in the same way. As driven as you are to take care of
00:30:00.980 yourself, be driven in the same way to take care of other people. Ephesians 5, when it's commanding,
00:30:07.480 when the Bible is commanding a husband to love his wife as he loves his own flesh, it then says
00:30:14.020 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it in the same way a husband is to
00:30:20.740 love his wife as he loves himself. So again, we see that the Bible says that it is natural. It is
00:30:26.880 innate for us to love ourselves. So that is why I say it is not biblical. It is not biblical to pursue
00:30:34.700 self-love because we are born with all of the love that we need. If you struggle, if you struggle with
00:30:40.720 self-doubt, if you struggle with self-deprecation, if you struggle with insecurity, remember, those of
00:30:46.420 you who listen to my podcast have heard me say this a million times, the answer is not self-love,
00:30:50.640 but God's love, which is infinitely better than any love that you can muster for yourself. Jesus did not
00:30:56.500 come and die so you could have higher self-esteem. He came to give you a new self, not just a new and
00:31:01.680 improved self, not living your best life now, but a new self, a new creation that is able to follow
00:31:08.140 him, to be holy as he is holy. And so for your friends who are immersed in this culture, I would
00:31:14.120 encourage you to speak the truth in love, to speak the truth confidently, and to not say,
00:31:18.760 hey, you're supposed to hate yourself, but to say, hey, God's way is better. God's way is better.
00:31:23.660 What you are finding yourself in is actually glorified narcissism. It's trendy narcissism,
00:31:28.960 as I call it. And it's not biblical. And it's ultimately not going to fulfill you. Like it's
00:31:34.000 ultimately not good for you. It's ultimately not going to satisfy you. It's ultimately not even going
00:31:38.580 to make you happy because eventually you are going to run out of the love and the confidence that you
00:31:43.540 have for yourself. And then what then? Like what happens when you can't motivate yourself with
00:31:48.040 positive self-talk? Like what happens when you don't have anything good to think about yourself,
00:31:52.320 when you have failed, when you have made mistakes, when you do have guilt and regret and all of these
00:31:57.840 things, when you are insecure, when you do fear, like what if you don't have any love or confidence
00:32:02.660 or self-esteem to muster up in yourself? Where do you go then? You've reached the bottom of the
00:32:06.380 barrel. But if you go to God for all the care and all of the eternal affection and the true deep
00:32:15.620 sacrificial love that you need, the healthy spiritual confidence that you need, then you
00:32:23.140 are not going to have to worry about that because his is the well that never runs dry.
00:32:28.800 So I encourage you to pray for them, to speak the truth and love to them, to bring scripture to the
00:32:33.140 table. And hopefully that is something that strengthens your friendship and doesn't actually
00:32:38.040 weaken it. Okay. So once again, I did not have time to answer all the questions that I wanted to
00:32:43.480 answer because I kind of go off on these tangents, but I hope that this was helpful for you. I will
00:32:48.720 answer some questions on Monday's episode as well, but thank you guys so much for listening. Hope you've
00:32:53.360 had a great week and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I will see you back here on Monday.
00:32:57.140 I'll see you back here on Monday.