Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 255 ｜ Hypocrisy Unmasked： Killing Grandma and Blaming Christians

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far.

00:00:06.600 So if you are watching this on YouTube, you can see that I am in a new different set and I am so

00:00:14.380 excited about it. This is the set that I am going to be in from now on for the past few weeks because

00:00:20.660 of quarantine, all of that stuff. I have been filming from home, which has been fine, but not

00:00:26.220 ideal. I didn't have the mic that I wanted to set up and you've seen pretty much every different wall

00:00:31.120 in my house, but now we have a new permanent set for Relatable and it looks so good. We're still

00:00:36.780 working on some artwork in different places. If you guys have recommendations for me, what you

00:00:43.260 think would look good, feel free to send those suggestions my way, but I'm just so excited about

00:00:48.220 it. We are now in our new Relatable home. If you are not watching on YouTube, make sure that you

00:00:54.640 subscribe to my Allie Beth Stuckey YouTube channel. We also have a lot of fun, new exclusive

00:01:00.680 YouTube Blaze TV content coming up for you guys. So that is something to look forward to if you

00:01:08.100 subscribe. Okay. Today we are going to be talking about the news since it is Wednesday, but we haven't

00:01:13.100 talked about the news in a while. We've been talking about for the past two episodes, pretty evergreen

00:01:18.080 topics that you guys were asking me about, but I have been dying to talk about what's going on in New

00:01:23.580 York and why all of the praise of Governor Cuomo is completely misplaced. So we're going to talk

00:01:30.540 about some of the scandal there. We've talked about it a little bit in the past. We're going to talk

00:01:34.400 about it a little bit more today. We are going to also talk about the blame on evangelical Christians

00:01:41.560 for the coronavirus and for people resisting these lockdowns. Again, we talked about that a little bit

00:01:48.300 when we discussed if Christians should resist tyranny. If you haven't listened to that episode,

00:01:54.220 I do recommend you go back and listen to that. I think it was last Monday, but we'll talk about it

00:01:59.980 a little bit more today and why the media and particularly people of the more of the leftist

00:02:06.200 persuasion have it out for Christians and what that reveals about them. And then of course, how we as

00:02:11.800 Christians should be thinking about that. Now let's get into what's going on in the state of New York

00:02:16.640 when it comes to coronavirus. So my friend, Bethany Mandel, she is a great follow by the way on

00:02:23.460 Instagram. If you're someone who is looking into homeschooling, she homeschools her children. She's

00:02:28.340 a mom of four. She had a baby like two weeks before I did or something like that last summer. And we've

00:02:34.940 just become friends over the past year and a half or something like that. And she has a lot of good

00:02:39.300 motherhood advice and a lot of good homeschooling advice as well. So she had a Twitter thread a few weeks

00:02:46.460 ago, a couple of weeks ago. I don't know. Time is still warped for me during all of this crazy

00:02:51.040 coronavirus stuff. But she made a comment about, you know what? I feel like we really as, you know,

00:02:58.380 as a society, as a community, or even just as a family, we need to start going out and, or at least

00:03:03.300 looking for ways to help all of the restaurants, all of the business and services that we love that

00:03:09.400 are really hurt by this, that are having to lay people off, aren't getting any business or anything

00:03:13.840 like that. She's thinking about the museums that she takes her family to, all of the, all of these

00:03:19.420 places that are really suffering. And she made a comment, and this is very Bethany Mandel of her to

00:03:25.580 say something like this. She said, you know, call me a grandma killer, but I want to, I need to go out

00:03:31.840 and to patronize these places, not just for the sake of my family, but also for the sake of these people

00:03:37.840 who own these businesses. Well, the term grandma killer went viral on Twitter. It was a trending

00:03:44.900 hashtag and everyone was calling her, you know, this terrible person. People were giving these

00:03:50.580 tributes to their grandparents saying, my grandparents are so important to me. And the

00:03:55.240 right just wants to sacrifice grandparents for their 401k or whatever, completely disregarding her

00:04:01.380 argument, disregarding the fact that she was obviously, it was a hyperbole. She was making a joke,

00:04:07.480 but this became an entire thing. This virtue signaling by a lot of people on the left saying

00:04:14.480 that people on the right just don't care about old people. We don't care about the elderly. Well,

00:04:20.840 here's my question that I am going to pose to you today. Who is the real grandma killer? Like if we're

00:04:26.980 really going to point fingers at who has sacrificed the elderly, I don't think it's the people who care 0.99

00:04:33.040 about those who have lost their jobs or lost their business days or who are really

00:04:37.220 suffering economically and financially right now. And by the way, this is a false argument by a lot of

00:04:42.540 people on the left who are very pro-draconian lockdown that say, oh, conservatives only want to

00:04:48.160 open up the economy because, oh, they need to get their nails done and they need to get their haircut and

00:04:52.160 they only care about their 401k. As if the economy doesn't affect real families who are trying to put

00:04:57.220 food on the table for their kids. I mean, when we talk about economic calamity, when we talk about

00:05:03.580 economic hardship, we're not talking about people's 401k. We're not, I mean, not that that doesn't

00:05:08.640 matter, but that's not all we're talking about. Primarily, we're talking about the people who need

00:05:12.900 to provide for themselves in order to survive, who need to provide for their families and who,

00:05:17.280 by the way, go to work to have some sense of purpose in their life. I mean, there's a reason why

00:05:21.860 suicides have increased so much, why child abuse has increased so much. These lockdowns are to blame

00:05:28.680 for at least a lot of that. I can't say all of it, but at least a lot of that. So there is also a

00:05:33.780 compassionate conversation to be had about the financial hardship that people are going through. 0.67

00:05:39.780 It's not one or the other, but in this dumb Twitter world that a lot of people live in, it becomes 0.99

00:05:45.480 this false binary and this stupid conversation based on a ton of false premises. And you see that 1.00

00:05:53.400 these are false binaries and false premises and just strawman arguments all around. When you look at

00:06:00.440 who they, a lot of people on the left are hailing as a hero and what he has actually done when it comes

00:06:08.180 to taking care of the elderly. And I am talking about Governor Andrew Cuomo. You know, he is the

00:06:13.940 governor of New York. We talked about him on the podcast titled Little Tyrants Everywhere. Highly

00:06:19.660 recommend you go listen to that episode if you haven't already. He's obviously a Democrat. He is

00:06:24.200 a far left Democrat. You probably remember a couple years ago when the state passed the horrific

00:06:30.080 Reproductive Health Act, which legalized aborting a child for any reason up until the moment of birth.

00:06:36.040 He lit the buildings in New York City in pink. It was such a celebratory time and he was applauded.

00:06:41.560 It's this great progressive hero and he is still being applauded as that. In fact, he is being

00:06:47.380 applauded as a hero for his handling of the coronavirus. Let's read some of the headlines

00:06:52.180 about Governor Andrew Cuomo. Washington Post. Andrew Cuomo gets it right. Governed by science,

00:06:59.620 not your gut. Washington Post. As Washington stumbled, governors stepped up to the forefront and

00:07:06.760 it is a picture of Andrew Cuomo. And this is a quote from that article in the Washington Post.

00:07:12.240 His daily news conferences became must-watch television with the governor never known for

00:07:18.160 his likability, projecting empathy and realism while repeatedly challenging Washington to do more.

00:07:24.560 The briefings provided a contrast with Trump's often contentious daily sessions in the White House.

00:07:30.220 One of Mayor Bill de Blasio's former advisors said on Twitter that Cuomo should be the Democratic

00:07:35.720 nominee. A lot of people were saying the same thing. CNN headline, Andrew Cuomo said he'll never run for

00:07:42.580 president. That's a mistake. Of course, we know that CNN's Chris Cuomo has his brother Andrew Cuomo on

00:07:50.340 pretty much every week without asking him any kind of pressing question about his leadership

00:07:54.920 whatsoever. MSNBC recently had an interview with Cuomo, asked him zero hard-hitting questions about

00:08:02.640 why his state is suffering so much more drastically than any other state by far. Let me repeat that.

00:08:10.100 New York is suffering more drastically than any other state by far. As of right now, there have been

00:08:16.960 tragically 360,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York and over 23,000 deaths by the time I am

00:08:26.900 recording this. That is in a state of 19 million people. Now, let's do some compare and contrast.

00:08:32.760 In Florida, a state of over 21 million people and a large elderly population, there have been only

00:08:40.400 about 50,000 confirmed cases and only about 2,200 deaths. So 2,200 deaths in Florida versus over 23,000

00:08:49.620 deaths in the state of New York and Florida is more populous. In Texas, a state with 29 million people

00:08:55.540 has had about 54,000 cases with only about 1,500 deaths. Again, 1,500 deaths versus 23,000 deaths

00:09:04.280 in New York. And these states have also had much less restrictive lockdowns. Now, there is no doubt

00:09:11.620 that New York is different. It is more densely populated, a lot more public transportation that's

00:09:17.880 much more used than in places like Florida and New York or places like Florida and Texas. And that's

00:09:25.360 especially true, of course, in New York City where most of its cases are. But it cannot really be the

00:09:31.560 only reason. It couldn't possibly be that maybe leadership has fumbled, that maybe they haven't

00:09:37.260 done as good of a job as the media has said that they are doing. So let's review some facts about Cuomo

00:09:42.860 State and examine why possibly they have run into so much trouble. We have talked about this in the

00:09:48.800 past, but it bears repeating. So the state of New York was facing a budget crisis before all of this

00:09:54.600 happened. Back in November, the New York Post reported that New York faced a 6.1 billion hole in their

00:10:00.920 budget for this year. And Cuomo was planning on making cuts to Medicaid rates for hospitals and

00:10:06.580 nursing homes. They failed to present a real plan, criticized Dave Friedel of the Citizens Budget

00:10:12.120 Commission, a fiscal watchdog group. They've known about this for a long time, but the plan they did

00:10:17.920 present is really one part gimmick. He added, his analysis shows the state was already in trouble after

00:10:24.120 pushing off a $1.7 billion Medicaid bill in March 2019 into 2020, which grew into the $4 billion.

00:10:34.420 According to an article in The Nation, a left-wing commentary magazine, obviously I don't agree with

00:10:40.400 a lot of what they write, but they can be pretty good at holding Democrats accountable. This is an

00:10:45.580 article by Ross Barkin titled, Cuomo helped get New York into this mess. Governor Cuomo has long

00:10:52.240 mismanaged the budget and the Medicaid program in the state and has reduced the size of hospitals.

00:10:59.000 Here are some excerpts from the article in which he argues that some of the budgetary abyss has been

00:11:04.380 the Cuomo administration's own making, postponing Medicaid payments and failing in the past to iron

00:11:10.420 out inefficiencies like the state's paying Medicaid costs for relatively wealthy private hospitals

00:11:16.400 or relatively wealthy private hospitals that don't need the aid in the first place. What's more,

00:11:22.480 the state has lost more than 20,000 hospital beds over the last 20 years. Cuomo, who has governed for

00:11:28.560 almost half that period, Cuomo has governed since 2011, never advocated for any kind of expansion of

00:11:35.120 hospital beds until last month. He now says New York needs 110,000 beds, this was a couple months ago,

00:11:41.400 more than double the current capacity. He has never been a forceful advocate for keeping hospitals

00:11:46.900 open. In fact, he has empowered bureaucrats who have argued aggressively to shutter them.

00:11:52.560 In 2013, the Cuomo administration approved the closure of the 500-bed Long Island College Hospital

00:11:59.300 in Brooklyn over loud community protest. Cuomo has justified his cuts to Medicaid by saying,

00:12:05.920 look, we have no money. He is quoted by a representative of him in this article as saying,

00:12:12.560 look, the state has no money. And that was before this entire coronavirus crisis. So the state was in

00:12:18.300 huge financial trouble before this whole thing hit. And now Cuomo is blaming the federal government,

00:12:23.700 Trump specifically, for this catastrophe. Forbes headline says, Cuomo says this,

00:12:29.300 if you want states to reopen, we need funding. Axios, Cuomo warns of budget cuts to schools and hospitals

00:12:37.080 if they don't get federal help. So I think that's some type of threat for publicity. CNBC, Cuomo said,

00:12:45.300 we need financial help because of the coronavirus situation. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not

00:12:51.580 because of the coronavirus situation. It might have exacerbated the pre-existing problems,

00:12:56.720 but the reason that New York has no money is because they didn't have any money to begin with.

00:13:03.160 There was a $6 billion hole in the budget, and now they're hoping that Trump is going to

00:13:08.780 bail them out. And it's politically expedient, both for him and for the world's worst mayor,

00:13:14.440 Bill de Blasio, who is also incompetent and corrupt and has mismanaged their budget. It's 0.97

00:13:19.140 politically expedient for them to blame Donald Trump for the problems that they were already facing

00:13:23.680 before the coronavirus hit. And the coronavirus has just made them worse. They can abdicate

00:13:29.860 responsibility and Cuomo's approval rating can stay high if they do that. But it is getting harder and

00:13:37.640 harder for Cuomo to do to do that, to keep his approval rating high and to pretend like he is some

00:13:43.740 hero when it comes to all of this as people are beginning to notice his failure of leadership,

00:13:48.480 particularly when it comes to the elderly. And this is where we get into the conversation of who

00:13:54.340 the real, quote, grandma killers are. So Cuomo, he issued an executive order on March 25th, and we

00:14:02.100 didn't know about this until recently, that all coronavirus patients in the hospital who were in

00:14:08.300 nursing homes before they went to the hospital must be sent back to the nursing home, not after they

00:14:13.700 recover, but while they were recovering. So still contagious. Apparently, this was to open up

00:14:19.600 hospital beds, but probably it probably had more to do with Medicare reimbursements. Hospitals at times,

00:14:25.300 especially now, are pressured or feel pressured to have quick turnover to make more money, especially

00:14:32.200 in a state like New York. Under the CARES Act that passed, hospitals can add 20 percent to their fee for

00:14:38.780 treating a COVID-19 patient on Medicare. We may not know the real reason, but we do know that this

00:14:45.460 ended up being a total tragedy and disaster, according to Business Insider. By sending elderly 1.00

00:14:51.060 New Yorkers recovering from COVID-19 to nursing homes, the virus spread among the most vulnerable

00:14:57.040 and has since resulted in 5,800 deaths at New York nursing homes and adult care facilities. So again,

00:15:05.480 that's about five times more than the total deaths in Texas, a more populous state, just in nursing

00:15:11.920 homes alone in New York, 5,800 deaths. That's tragic. Okay. ProPublica, they also came out with a long

00:15:21.520 article talking about this scandal, why New York has suffered nearly 10 times the number of deaths

00:15:29.200 as California, another hugely populous state. And ProPublica says this,

00:15:34.260 New York's pandemic preparedness and response plan first created in 2006 and running to hundreds of

00:15:40.700 pages predicted the state's health care system would be overwhelmed in such a situation. It's

00:15:45.660 obviously talking about the pandemic and it highlighted two vital necessities, a robust and

00:15:50.960 up-to-date state stockpile of emergency equipment and protective gear and a mechanism for quickly

00:15:56.720 expanding the number of hospital beds available. Despite repeated requests, New York state health

00:16:02.780 officials would not say what was in the state's stockpile at the start of 2020, but it clearly

00:16:09.220 was not adequate. It took another two weeks before Cuomo announced he had created a command center that

00:16:16.380 would get a handle on emergency supplies and available beds at hospitals across the state so that such

00:16:22.900 resources could be directed at places of need. It had been a month since the state's first case.

00:16:29.440 As for the state pandemic plan that laid out how hospital expansion should happen, Michael Dowling,

00:16:35.880 the chief executive officer of Northwell Health and also an advisor to Cuomo, that's the largest

00:16:41.600 hospital organization in the state, he said that he had never seen any kind of document and did not

00:16:48.380 know of its existence. So the plan of how they were going to be able to expand hospital capacity.

00:16:54.760 Meanwhile, the New York State Nurses Association has sued the state health department in New York and

00:17:00.940 its commissioner for failing to adequately equip frontline medical workers with protective wear and

00:17:06.140 get this, allowing hospitals to order nurses sickened by the virus back to work. Let me repeat that.

00:17:16.360 The New York State Nurses Association has sued the state health department and its commissioner for not

00:17:23.540 only equip not equipping frontline workers with the protective gear that they need, but also

00:17:28.240 allowing hospitals to order nurses sickened by the coronavirus back to work. When Cuomo has been asked

00:17:36.540 about his nursing home policy, he insists that he is not responsible and said that the journalist who

00:17:43.900 asked him the question should go ask President Trump. Okay. Much of the outbreak also has to do,

00:17:49.920 like I said, with the incompetence of de Blasio. He is corrupt. He is not good at managing the budget. 0.99

00:18:00.360 There is a miscommunication and also a dislike between Cuomo and de Blasio that likely exacerbated

00:18:06.520 all of this. Of course, we've seen de Blasio out in public after he told everyone else to stay inside.

00:18:11.880 He has been seen working out, walking without a mask, and all of that, of course, because it's socialism for

00:18:17.480 and not for me. What's insane is that Cuomo still has an 81% approval rating for how he has handled the

00:18:27.240 virus in New York. This shows you the power of the media, the power of a narrative, and also the power

00:18:34.680 of good PR. I will give Cuomo credit that he is very good at these press conferences. Sure, he's

00:18:40.360 advocating responsibility in the same way that the press accuses Trump of doing, which Trump has done the

00:18:45.960 same thing and he gets blasted for it, and maybe rightly so. But Cuomo gets no such criticism from

00:18:51.740 the press when he abdicates responsibility of the things that he is clearly to blame for. But he is

00:18:57.720 good at making people feel comforted. He is good at at least seeming like, in his rhetoric, weighing both

00:19:05.620 sides of the problem. And I think he comes across as very comforting, like he's taking control of this

00:19:11.620 situation. But the media is very lazy in all of this, in that they assume that if you are implementing

00:19:19.420 draconian lockdowns, if you are telling everyone to stay inside, that you're telling people that they

00:19:23.460 can't worship, that they can't go to church, that they can't gather together, they can't go see their

00:19:26.820 family, all of this stuff that New York has tried very hard to implement, the media assumes that you

00:19:33.900 are doing everything you possibly can, and that you're a good leader. But Cuomo himself has said that I

00:19:38.720 think it was about 60% of the recent coronavirus cases have been from people who have been sheltering

00:19:45.160 in place, people who have been quarantining, people who haven't left their house. And so who's to say

00:19:51.240 that these lockdowns are as effective as the media is just assuming that they are? There have obviously

00:19:58.040 been other policies that Cuomo has enacted that have led to the needless deaths of thousands of people,

00:20:04.860 particularly elderly people. And yes, a lot of people or some people in the media have reported

00:20:10.700 on that. But all the people calling Bethany Mandel a grandma killer haven't come back and said, you know

00:20:16.220 what, that was probably unfair for me to accuse her of being that when the real, if you want to, I

00:20:21.620 wouldn't call him a grandma killer. But if you want to use that terminology, the real people who are

00:20:26.060 actually responsible, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of elderly

00:20:32.640 people, they're not some conservative journalist or commentator on Twitter. They are these leaders

00:20:38.760 who are making the decisions to put people with coronavirus back into nursing homes. Thankfully,

00:20:45.220 after a lot of people made a fuss about this, mostly conservatives, they reversed the policy. But it

00:20:51.240 actually, it took people saying something about it and making a fuss about it for them to reverse it.

00:20:56.680 If no one had noticed, I highly doubt they would have changed course. But this shows you not only the

00:21:02.900 power of the media and a power of the narrative, but also the purpose of media. Many media have treated

00:21:08.840 Cuomo like all of this just happened to him. But Trump has been given the responsibility for even problems

00:21:14.460 that aren't his responsibility, like what states decide to do. Whereas Ron DeSantis, the governor of

00:21:21.940 Florida, according to a May 15th article in the Sun Sentinel, DeSantis handling of coronavirus was

00:21:29.520 approved by 49 percent and disapproved by 36 percent. So Governor Cuomo, responsible for the

00:21:35.980 deaths of thousands and thousands of old people, has hundreds of thousands of cases in his state,

00:21:41.740 tens of thousands of deaths. He has an 81 percent approval rating. People are talking about him being

00:21:46.400 the Democratic nominee. Ron DeSantis, with much fewer deaths and fewer cases, has a 49 percent approval

00:21:54.720 rating. Rich Lowry at New York Post says this, an irony of the national coverage of the coronavirus

00:22:00.740 crisis is that at the same time DeSantis was being made into a villain, New York Governor Cuomo was being

00:22:07.260 elevated as a hero, even though the DeSantis approach to nursing homes was obviously superior to

00:22:14.840 that of Cuomo. Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19 positive people out of nursing homes,

00:22:20.500 while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been

00:22:26.120 a debacle. So Florida fortified the hospitals with PPE, but DeSantis realized, oh, this is still part of

00:22:33.000 the article, but DeSantis realized that it wouldn't do the hospitals any good if infection in the nursing

00:22:37.960 homes ran out of control. If I can send PPE to the nursing homes and they can prevent an outbreak there,

00:22:44.260 that's going to do more to lower the burden on hospitals than me just sending them another 500,000

00:22:49.840 N95 masks. Of course, that's true. When the state was seeing infections at nursing homes, presumably

00:22:54.780 caused by staff, DeSantis deployed what he calls an expeditionary testing force, 50 National Guard teams

00:23:01.460 of four guardsmen together with the Department of Health personnel that tested staff and residents.

00:23:06.560 The state has just deployed a mobile testing lab in an RV that has a rapid test with results

00:23:11.680 in an hour or two. It has also started a Sentinel surveillance program for long-term care facilities,

00:23:18.820 routinely taking representative samples to monitor for flare-ups. Finally, it has established several

00:23:23.500 COVID-19-only nursing homes with a couple more in the pipeline. The idea, again, is to get COVID-19

00:23:29.740 positive residents out of the regular nursing homes to the maximum extent possible. Obviously,

00:23:35.520 that seems like common sense. That would be what you do. But of course, New York didn't implement

00:23:41.700 those policies. Florida did. And DeSantis has been dragged through the mud by the media, whereas Cuomo

00:23:49.100 has been hailed as a hero. Cuomo, 81% approval rating, even though hundreds of thousands of deaths,

00:23:56.200 thousands in nursing homes alone because of his policies. DeSantis, 49% approval rating when his state

00:24:02.940 of over 21 million people, more than New York, by the way, and a large elderly population,

00:24:09.000 there have been only, again, 50,000 confirmed cases and only 2,200 deaths. Of course, every case is bad

00:24:15.420 and every death is tragic. But if you're just looking at the numbers here and the policies, it seems like

00:24:21.380 DeSantis has done a much better job and he's not getting the same kind of treatment in the media. 0.69

00:24:26.640 Okay, now I want to go into how Christians have been treated in all of this and some of the ridiculous

00:24:33.980 shaming and blaming that's going on in the media toward us by them. Let's talk about some of this

00:24:40.620 ridiculousness that's going on in the media towards evangelicals. And look, I'm not playing the victim 0.91

00:24:44.560 here. Whatever. They're going to say this stuff about Christians. This is the new way to signal that 0.96

00:24:50.320 you are very advanced, that you have been to a very prestigious college and you are very sophisticated

00:24:57.080 and academic and you think harder than all of those religious bumpkins out there. The way that you signal 1.00

00:25:02.440 that you are very smart and posh indeed and that you run in all of the elitist circles in Manhattan and

00:25:07.440 D.C. is by talking badly about evangelicals. And the Washington Post, of course, is signaling that they are

00:25:13.300 all of those things and more with this headline. What's really behind Republicans wanting a swift

00:25:18.640 reopening? Evangelicals. Yes, but of course. So this is this guy's argument. Polls say Democrats

00:25:27.320 care more about the virus than Republicans. Democrats, I don't think, care very much about

00:25:35.340 Republicans at all. So the polls say, he says, the Democrats care more about the virus than

00:25:40.120 Republicans. Republicans care more about our rights, he notes. Evangelicals are the keystone of

00:25:46.140 the Republican Party. Evangelicals believe in eternal life through Jesus. Therefore,

00:25:50.780 they don't care whether or not people live or die due to the coronavirus. That's his argument. He

00:25:55.200 doesn't present statistics saying that evangelicals want people to die or don't care if they die or

00:26:01.320 that we're completely fatalistic or that we don't care about the coronavirus at all. He is making these

00:26:06.040 connections that, OK, Republicans, the polls say that we care or we want to open up more than the

00:26:11.980 Democrats do. Evangelicals are part of the Republican Party. Evangelicals believe in eternal

00:26:16.220 life. So they don't care what happens here. And here's so here's how he makes this argument. It's

00:26:23.300 you know, you have to give them you have to give them at least a pat on the back for trying because

00:26:27.340 that's what they really want. They want some kind of golf clap and applause, not from us evangelicals,

00:26:32.160 but we'll give them the affirmation that they need. This is a creative argument. So he says,

00:26:36.660 what was somewhat surprising, I guess, in the study that he's looking at is how the beliefs

00:26:42.180 of evangelicals compare to Catholics, another group that might be considered biblical literalists.

00:26:48.760 According to Pew, he says 84 percent of evangelicals believe the Bible is the word of God

00:26:53.820 compared with only 62 percent of Catholics. 55 percent of evangelicals agree that the Bible

00:27:00.380 should be interpreted literally twice the percentage of Catholics. And here's what he deduces from that

00:27:06.160 data. Among those who hold literal biblical interpretations is the certainty that waiting

00:27:12.640 at the end of this terrestrial journey is eternal life in heaven. The coronavirus, he says,

00:27:19.280 Christian fundamentalism is often fatalistic. By the way, fundamentalist is the new Puritan. So it 0.93

00:27:25.460 used to be that if you actually believed in the Bible and actually wanted to live out the Bible

00:27:31.360 and you believed in biblical virtues like chastity and temperance and things like that, people just

00:27:36.600 called you a Puritan. You don't want to be a Puritan because that's no fun. Now it's fundamentalist.

00:27:41.840 You don't want to be a fundamentalist, those people that actually read and believe in the Bible. You

00:27:45.560 need to be a fun, tolerant Christian. He's basically an agnostic who sometimes talks about Jesus. So

00:27:50.380 this is the pejorative that he is using. Christian fundamentalism, he says, is often fatalistic.

00:27:55.920 As far as many evangelicals are concerned, life passes quickly. Suffering is temporary and worrying

00:28:00.740 solves nothing. True. That's not a view that comports well with long stretches of earthly time

00:28:06.360 spent waiting out business closures or stay at home orders. Okay. So part of that is true. We

00:28:12.820 obviously don't believe that we should be worked up into a tizzy or that we should be worked into

00:28:19.360 over worrying about something. The Bible is very clear about that because we believe in a sovereign

00:28:23.600 God that's in control of everything and works all things together for the good of those who love

00:28:27.360 him and are called according to his purpose. And so he's right. We don't believe in over worrying

00:28:32.640 about things. He says that we believe that suffering is temporary. That is absolutely true. We do believe

00:28:38.260 that suffering is temporary, that all of the things that we suffer and we go through are creating for

00:28:42.640 us a far greater glory that outweighs all of the trials and tribulations that people are suffering

00:28:48.480 here today and that life passes quickly. And that is absolutely true. We know that we are just

00:28:52.820 blips on the span of eternity. But his idea that we are fatalistic in our thinking and we think,

00:28:59.300 you know what, just open up whatever happens, happens. That is not, I don't believe, how Christians 1.00

00:29:05.480 think at all. Sure, we believe that life is temporary. We believe that we shouldn't overworry about things.

00:29:11.360 We believe that God is sovereign and in control and good and that all things are working together

00:29:16.000 for his glory. But there is a reason why Christians are on the front line for humanitarian aid 0.99

00:29:22.180 everywhere. Like there is, if you're going to say that we as evangelicals believe in biblical

00:29:27.600 literalism and that is causing us to, that is, you know, encouraging us to focus more on eternal life

00:29:36.920 in heaven rather than life here on earth, then you have to also give credit to the fact that we also take

00:29:42.980 the biblical mandates literally and seriously to love our neighbor as ourself, to care for the poor,

00:29:49.480 to give what we have, to give our time, energy, and resources to those who need it. I mean, that's why

00:29:54.280 you have organizations like Samaritan's Purse, who has probably done more good in New York helping

00:30:00.920 those with coronavirus than a lot of the hospitals have. And how were they treated in New York? They were

00:30:07.580 protested as being homophobic, as being bigots. People were saying on Twitter, even local officials 0.57

00:30:14.540 in New York City were saying, we got to kick them out. We don't need any part in their bigotry and

00:30:20.600 homophobia because they are, of course, a Christian organization. And so they believe in the biblical

00:30:26.640 definition of marriage between man and a woman. But did they ever turn anyone away? Did they ever,

00:30:32.220 did they ever act in a bigoted way? Did they ever not care for someone because of their sexual

00:30:38.000 orientation or gender identity or anything like that? Of course not. They were indiscriminate in

00:30:42.980 their care for people, very compassionate, and saved people's lives, probably thousands of people's

00:30:48.140 lives. And yet they were shunned by a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people in New York

00:30:53.000 because they happened to hold a biblical value. Now, if it were true that evangelicals, biblical

00:30:59.800 literalism are believed that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, if it were true that that

00:31:05.180 produces this kind of cavalier attitude about the coronavirus, would the Samaritan's Purse exist

00:31:11.440 in the thousands of organizations like Samaritan's Purse? All the organizations that fight sex 0.98

00:31:17.840 trafficking, that help mothers and families in need, that help the homeless, would all of these

00:31:23.400 organizations that are primarily owned by Christian people, would they exist? Would they fight as hard 0.98

00:31:30.820 as they do if we just believed that this life didn't matter, if we were just fatalistic in the

00:31:36.280 sense that, you know, whatever happens, happens, and we're all just going to die as long as we believe

00:31:40.960 in Jesus, it's fine. No, we believe that life on earth matters. Of course we do. And we believe that

00:31:47.860 we are supposed to follow, literally, the biblical mandate to love our neighbors as ourselves. He

00:31:53.620 doesn't include that in the article. He makes some aside at the end saying, oh yeah, you know, they do

00:31:58.180 some good in their communities just like everyone else. They do some bad in their communities just like

00:32:02.000 everyone else. But again, he can't have his argument both ways. Either we take it literally that we

00:32:08.600 believe in eternal life and that God is sovereign, so that means that we are not going to be worked up

00:32:15.180 in a tizzy here. If we take that literally, then we also take the mandate to do good literally as

00:32:21.400 well, and he doesn't mention that. But here was a tweet that was attached to that article by Steven

00:32:26.360 Pinker. He is a Harvard professor, and he is a bioethicist, and he also has argued for many

00:32:32.960 atrocious things because he's an atheist, and so he doesn't believe that human life is inherently 1.00

00:32:36.900 valuable because we are made in the image of God. Here's what he says in a commentary to that article.

00:32:43.860 Well, belief in an afterlife is a malignant delusion since it devalues actual lives and discourages

00:32:51.240 action that would make them longer, safer, and happier. Exhibit A, what's really behind Republicans

00:32:57.960 wanting a swift reopening? Evangelicals. Again, the article that he's citing doesn't cite any data to

00:33:05.260 prove that that's true, that it's evangelicals that have this kind of a glib attitude about the

00:33:11.220 coronavirus, but it supports his preconceived notion that Christians have this malignant belief

00:33:17.900 in eternal life. But here's what Steven Pinker doesn't understand, can't possibly understand, because

00:33:22.200 remember, the eyes of his heart are darkened because he is not a believer. If we believe in

00:33:29.780 an afterlife, if we believe in eternity, that means that we believe that human beings are eternal, that

00:33:35.480 we are unique, and that we are made in the image of God, which means that we each have a soul, which

00:33:40.520 means that we're all equally valuable from the womb to the tomb, which means our desire as Christians to

00:33:46.040 care for people is a lot more intense, is a lot higher, because we see them not just as flesh and

00:33:54.100 bones, not just as material objects, not just as a product of evolution, that we're all just here by

00:33:59.400 chance. But we believe that every individual has inherent value and is here for a purpose. Therefore,

00:34:05.820 that is why we care for the people that need our help. That is why we care for the least of these.

00:34:14.260 That and the fact that, as the Bible says, the love of Christ compels us to do that. We believe in

00:34:20.040 emulating the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and how he helped the least of these, how he helped the poor,

00:34:25.280 how he helped the sick, how he loved his neighbor as himself, and of course loved us so much that he

00:34:30.300 sacrificed himself on a cross for our sins. That's what we believe in emulating. What I would like

00:34:35.340 Steven Pinker to defend is how his materialistic worldview lends him to any sort of compassion

00:34:43.860 whatsoever. How does his idea that after we die, we're all just done, that none of us have any souls, and so

00:34:49.740 we don't really have any inherent values or any God-given rights. We're not made in the image of God.

00:34:54.600 We really are just flesh and bone and matter and just overgrown clumps of cells. How does his

00:34:59.660 worldview create any basis whatsoever for compassion and caring for the least of these? And again,

00:35:05.560 I would like Steven Pinker to take a look at the history of Christianity, that not only have we been

00:35:11.260 on the front lines against every civil rights travesty, whether it's slavery or Jim Crow or

00:35:18.280 the Holocaust, not only have Christians fought against all of those things throughout our history,

00:35:23.200 but we have also started hospitals, the thousands of non-profit organizations that help the sick,

00:35:30.700 that help the poor, that help those who are still enslaved to this day. We have also headed up all

00:35:36.260 of the major Ivy League universities in this country. So don't act like Mr. Hoity-toity sophisticated

00:35:44.080 Harvard professor Christians, and our belief in eternal life has somehow driven us away from helping

00:35:50.440 people. That is the opposite of the truth. But again, these people are thinking backwards. These

00:35:56.720 people don't see the truth, and unfortunately, they are unable to see the truth. And this is just a

00:36:03.540 trend, it seems like, of people outside of a group telling the people inside of the group what they are

00:36:08.980 and what they actually believe in. And this is certainly true of the people who are pro-choice. So they're

00:36:13.980 pro-abortion telling everyone who is pro-life, who doesn't want to wear a mask, that they can't really

00:36:19.640 be pro-life. I don't know if you've seen those things going around, those posts going around saying,

00:36:24.860 if you don't wear a mask, then you're not really pro-life. Well, first of all, wear a mask if you

00:36:29.340 want to. We've worn masks in certain situations, and I don't at all judge people for wearing masks.

00:36:34.880 And if a company wants you to wear a mask, or a store wants you to wear a mask, and they enforce that

00:36:39.100 policy, then you should wear a mask and comply. It's not hurting you. You should do that. Or you

00:36:44.660 don't have to go to that store. I think that's all fine. But we don't know if masks work, first of all.

00:36:51.460 They told us very confidently, very adamantly, very persistently, consistently, just a couple

00:36:57.080 months ago, that masks don't work at all, that we shouldn't get masks, that we shouldn't be wearing

00:37:01.640 masks. Coronavirus is microscopic. We know that's true. So a bandana is not going to help. But now they're

00:37:08.080 telling us you have to wear a mask. Masks save lives. If you're not wearing a mask, you might

00:37:13.020 actually get, like, kicked out of the grocery store. So I want you to watch this clip of this

00:37:19.180 woman who is in a grocery store, not wearing a mask, being shouted down by people who are angry

00:37:26.180 that she is not wearing one.

00:37:27.540 That is crazy. I don't know if you guys have seen Black Mirror. It's a series on Netflix. It's

00:37:56.360 interesting. It's also really weird. It's like looking at the future and dystopia and how technology

00:38:01.720 could evolve and all of this stuff. But it reminds me of one of those episodes because there's an

00:38:06.180 episode of Black Mirror where it's hard to explain and I won't get into all of it, but people are

00:38:10.740 programmed and they're programmed to react a certain way or they're actually, like, playing a role in

00:38:18.120 this, like, real-life play. It's confusing. But anyway, these people remind me of people who have been

00:38:24.200 programmed in a show like Black Mirror. I mean, literally, a couple months ago, we heard that

00:38:29.420 masks didn't even work. And we know that masks for healthy people are unnecessary. Masks are to

00:38:35.800 protect other people if they work at all. To protect other people from your sickness if you're sick. I

00:38:44.200 want to read you a text message that I said that I was going to possibly read from my doctor friend.

00:38:50.860 He is an ER doctor. And this is what he sent me. Let's see. He said, as far as the whole mask thing

00:39:00.020 goes, cloth masks make people feel better, but it's like using a chain link fence to stop mosquitoes.

00:39:07.220 So that's the analogy that he is giving us. That it's really not effective, I guess, unless you have a

00:39:14.060 certain kind of PPE, a certain kind of mask for you to wear any kind of mask. Obviously, if you are sick,

00:39:20.420 don't go out in public. You should cover your mouth, wash your hands, all of that good stuff.

00:39:24.280 But to say that someone isn't pro-life because they are not wearing a mask that we do not know

00:39:29.660 works, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And especially for the people who actually advocate

00:39:35.020 for the poisoning, for the dismembering of unborn children, to tell the people who fight against

00:39:40.520 that, who are spending their lives, their energy, their resources, helping these moms save their 0.71

00:39:46.380 babies and also helping these moms after the baby is born, providing them with resources, classes,

00:39:51.500 and all of that good stuff. Telling those people that they're not pro-life because they're not wearing

00:39:56.060 a mask that we have no idea works or not. And actually, we're pretty sure it doesn't actually work.

00:40:01.880 That doesn't make any sense. But again, these people, some of their minds are warped,

00:40:07.100 and they are believing things that are untrue. And we simply know that that is going to be the

00:40:12.960 case. And we can try to reason with people. We can try to engage these people in conversation,

00:40:20.960 and that's fine. But ultimately, we have to remember, I have to remember that we cannot

00:40:26.440 rectify all ignorance. We can't rectify the mischaracterization of Christians completely

00:40:32.340 because that's just going to continue to happen. We can't rectify all of the groupthink that's

00:40:38.020 happening, the belief in some of the lies. And you guys know, I am someone who is not like a 0.64

00:40:43.480 coronavirus denier in any way. I think obviously it's very real, and it's deadly, and it's tragic

00:40:50.740 for the people who have been affected by it. And I all think that we should take precautions.

00:40:54.820 My family and I have taken a lot of precautions. I'm a germaphobe anyway, so my life hasn't changed

00:40:58.720 that much. But I encourage people to be cautious about this without living in fear and living in

00:41:05.020 paranoia while also keeping an eye on our rights, keeping an eye on our leaders. Remember that we

00:41:10.880 are a constitutional republic and what that actually means and what the Bill of Rights actually stands

00:41:15.380 for. I think that this has awoken people to just how precarious, apparently, according to some of our

00:41:21.040 leaders, our God-given rights actually are to them. And I think that it's allowed people to be aware

00:41:27.600 of just how greedy some people in charge are to take away our liberty. But at the same time,

00:41:34.600 I think that we should be taking this seriously in the best way that we can. And we just have to

00:41:41.720 understand, though, that even with that kind of rational and logical and balanced thinking,

00:41:47.800 that people are still going to call you names. They're still going to call you a grandma killer.

00:41:51.660 They're still going to say that it's your fault because you're a Christian and you want to go back

00:41:55.500 to church or that it's your fault that you're not wearing some bandana over your face to make

00:42:00.040 yourself and other people feel better. But I just want to remind you, I love reading this passage of

00:42:05.000 scripture and then we're done. We don't have time to get into anything else. I think I'm way over time

00:42:08.220 anyway. But I want to read you this passage of scripture because it always, it gives me peace

00:42:13.280 and assurance when I look at the world and I'm like, everything is crazy. Everything is backwards.

00:42:18.600 How are we ever going to survive this as Christians? And what do we do when I get all worried and

00:42:24.760 everything? But I love this passage, 1 Corinthians 1, 18 through 31. It's a little lengthy, but I

00:42:30.020 think it's worth reading the whole thing. So for the word of the cross is folly to those who are 0.88

00:42:35.460 perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy

00:42:40.720 the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise?

00:42:46.140 Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the

00:42:51.340 world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It pleased God

00:42:57.200 through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek 1.00

00:43:02.920 wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those 1.00

00:43:09.580 who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ power of God in the wisdom of God for the foolishness of God

00:43:15.920 is wiser than men. And the weakness of God is stronger than men. And it goes on to say that

00:43:22.540 you who are called, those of us who are called, we were not wise according to worldly standards.

00:43:27.180 God didn't choose us because of our power or for the wisdom that we brought to the table or

00:43:31.820 for the fact that we were of noble birth. But God chooses who is weak. God chooses who is foolish.

00:43:38.000 God chooses who the world considers not noble in order to bring himself glory and to bring the gospel 0.76

00:43:46.500 to the world so that we can't boast in anything that we do, but we can boast in God and everything

00:43:52.700 that he does. We have to trust in that. Okay, that's all that I have for today. I hope that you guys

00:43:59.120 enjoyed this. I'll be back here on Friday. And I'm so excited because I have an interview. We haven't

00:44:05.820 done interviews in so long, but now that we're in the studio, we get the capability to do that

00:44:10.140 with Kosti Hinn, who wrote God, Greed, and the Prosperity Gospel. He is so awesome. I'm so excited

00:44:16.520 for this interview. I know that you guys are going to love it. And I will see you on Friday.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 27, 2020

Ep 255 ｜ Hypocrisy Unmasked： Killing Grandma and Blaming Christians

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