Ep 255 ｜ Hypocrisy Unmasked： Killing Grandma and Blaming Christians
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.10077
Summary
In this episode, we talk about the coronavirus crisis in New York, and why Christians are being blamed for it. We also talk about why the media and leftist media have it out for Christians and what that reveals about them.
Transcript
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
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.
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
00:05:45.480
this false binary and this stupid conversation based on a ton of false premises. And you see that
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
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
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.
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.
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
00:24:44.560
here. Whatever. They're going to say this stuff about Christians. This is the new way to signal that
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:37:27.540
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
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
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
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
00:43:02.920
wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those
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
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.