Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 281 ｜ Why We're Still In this COVID Mess

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

00:00:15.780 far. Today we're going to talk about something that we have not talked about in a while and

00:00:19.840 that is the coronavirus and everything that is going on and some of the media malfeasance

00:00:25.600 surrounding that and why we are still in this predicament several months later after having

00:00:31.800 been told that it would be 15 days to flatten the curve and then 30 days to slow the spread.

00:00:38.100 Why are we still talking about this? Why are we still having so many cases? So we're going to get

00:00:42.940 all into that. But first, I want to bring this to you guys. We were just having a debate or a

00:00:49.340 conversation before we started rolling between The Office and Parks and Rec and which one is

00:00:55.700 better. Now, here's my take on this. I just thought that I would start this podcast with a little bit

00:01:01.580 of a lighthearted debate before we get into the more serious stuff. Just change it up just a little

00:01:06.440 bit. Here's how I feel about Parks and Rec versus The Office because we were talking about how we just

00:01:11.960 kind of have episodes on repeat going on in the background of our homes because it just helps

00:01:18.280 alleviate some of the pressure and the heaviness of everything that's going on right now. And I've

00:01:23.480 basically been watching The Office on repeat for the past, I don't know, seven years or something

00:01:28.660 like that. And so as my husband, here's the difference to me between Parks and Rec and The Office. So Parks and

00:01:34.980 Rec to me is a masterpiece. It's a work of art. There has never been, in my opinion, a better comedy series

00:01:41.500 overall than The Office. Now, Parks and Rec, though, it has that lightheartedness to it that makes you

00:01:51.080 want to watch it when you're sad or is a good pick-me-up. And it kind of endears you to some of

00:01:56.300 the characters more. And there are a few characters like John Ralphio, for example, or Tom on Parks and

00:02:02.480 Rec that just consistently make me laugh out loud. However, on The Office, I think that the funny parts,

00:02:11.500 what we were saying before this, the funny parts on The Office are just way funnier than on Parks and

00:02:18.620 Rec. So Parks and Rec is just like consistently like, oh, yeah, that just makes me feel good.

00:02:24.080 The Office doesn't always make me feel good. Sometimes it makes me feel very sad. It makes

00:02:27.620 me feel very uncomfortable. I think the most uncomfortable episode is the dinner party episode

00:02:32.820 with Jan and Michael inviting everyone over the Scott's Tots episode. I just can't even,

00:02:38.480 I just almost can't even watch it. But it's still so funny. Like, you just can't look away. And I

00:02:46.200 think that is what sets it apart from Parks and Rec. That's also what sets it apart from other

00:02:51.460 comedies like New Girl, which I really like. That's another one that makes you kind of just feel happy

00:02:56.220 all the time when you watch it. It's better than Arrested Development. I'm sorry, but I just cannot

00:03:00.240 get into Arrested Development. This really hurts my husband's feelings. We've had to work through this.

00:03:05.660 I've tried to get into Arrested Development and I just can't do it. But that was the debate in the

00:03:10.020 conversation that we were having before this. So I would love to hear your thoughts. If you're on

00:03:13.620 YouTube, leave me a little comment. If you are listening to this, you can message me on Instagram

00:03:18.980 and tell me your very important thoughts. I just think that The Office also is so important to the

00:03:24.200 national conscience right now. I'm going to be very sad when it's taken off Netflix. I think that

00:03:28.540 everyone needs to be forced to watch The Office and just allow themselves to be offended. That's what

00:03:34.800 I think that we need right now. I think everyone, especially the Wokanistas on the left, they just

00:03:41.200 need to allow themselves to be offended and just sit in their offense for a little bit. I think that

00:03:47.640 it would toughen us all up if we allowed the groups that we are a part of and associated with

00:03:52.960 to be made fun of just a little bit, to be poked around just a little bit. I think that would be

00:03:57.020 really good for us. I think that if we could all be a little bit more lighthearted about the groups

00:04:02.380 that we're a part of or even the organizations that we're associated with, the party that we are

00:04:09.600 associated with, I think that we could maybe all get along a little bit better. And I think The Office

00:04:14.640 has a unifying feature to it because it makes fun of everyone. So those are my thoughts. I'm very

00:04:21.020 curious to hear what you think. I think comedy and even offensive comedy, even comedy that offends me

00:04:26.940 is important right now because everything is just so dang serious and everyone is so perpetually

00:04:34.160 offended all the time. I think it would be good for us. I think it would be good for us to just

00:04:37.820 take a step back and laugh. Okay. Now we're switching gears. We're getting into something

00:04:42.080 a lot more serious. We're going to talk about the coronavirus. Yes. I can't believe that we are still

00:04:47.160 talking about this after so many months. I thought I was one of those people who thought in January,

00:04:52.200 February, you know, this is never going to become serious in the United States. This is something

00:04:57.040 that China is handling. And we might have a few cases here. Oh, yeah, there's a case in Washington,

00:05:02.240 but Washington has always been weird. And it's not going to spread to the rest of the country. And if

00:05:06.380 it does spread to the rest of the country, we're going to be able to handle it really well. That's

00:05:09.680 that was my mentality. I said that publicly. And I mean, I had reasons to believe that would be the

00:05:15.600 case. I felt like, okay, you know, we've got a good health care system. We know how to tamp down on this

00:05:23.520 kind of thing. We're just not going to let it spread. That was mid February that I think I was

00:05:28.620 making an Instagram story saying that. And then every week, it seemed that the news intensified. But I

00:05:35.880 even thought, you know, by mid March, we're not going to be talking about this anymore. At the beginning

00:05:39.760 of March, I spoke at an event in LA. And at that point, I think it was March 6. And I remember at

00:05:46.240 that point thinking, okay, I'm a little bit worried about this, because now we've got several cases in

00:05:52.240 the United States. And people are saying that they're canceling their their travel plans. And so

00:05:58.200 maybe I shouldn't go but but I went. And I think I wore a face mask on the airplane. And I obsessively

00:06:05.340 sanitized my hands and wiped down everything. And I do that. Anyway, I've told you guys,

00:06:09.580 I'm a germaphobe. So definitely during flu season, that's what I'm doing to like my my airplane seat

00:06:16.960 belt and the armrest and the and the tray table and all of that. So I'm already a germaphobe. But I

00:06:22.500 had a heightened sensitivity to the potential of germs because of the Coronavirus at the beginning of

00:06:28.700 March. I didn't really want to hug people and shake people's hands at this event. But I still thought

00:06:33.460 it's all going to go away. Like we're not going to be able to sustain this kind of stress and this kind

00:06:38.260 of pandemonium that already seemed to be spreading at the beginning of March. Well,

00:06:42.100 it was after that, that basically the world ended and that everything was shut down, people started

00:06:47.460 working from home. And all my speaking engagements got canceled, I had to shift the publication date

00:06:54.140 of my book, which was supposed to be at the beginning of May. Now it's August 11, that the book is coming

00:06:58.880 out and everything just kind of stopped and shifted forward to this indefinite date in the future,

00:07:05.300 when things would open back up and things would be back to normal. And we thought then that it was

00:07:11.680 going to be like I said, 15 days to flatten the curve 15 days to slow the spread or at most 30 days

00:07:18.620 to slow the spread. In March, we even heard from President Trump that it was going to be maybe it

00:07:22.980 was going to be Easter that things were going to open back up. And we thought, you know what,

00:07:28.060 we're all going to buckle down and do that because we want to get over this and people are dying

00:07:32.120 from this. People are getting really sick. This is apparently, you know, we were thinking then

00:07:36.720 not good for the elderly, even though we didn't have all the data. We knew that that was the case.

00:07:41.380 We had some sketchy information coming from the WHO, sketchy information coming from China as is

00:07:46.860 typical. And so we just thought, you know what, most people thought we are going to

00:07:51.660 do this together. We're all in this together was what we said. And we are going to stay home.

00:07:57.240 We're going to work from home 15 days, 30 days. We can definitely do that. And the idea was when

00:08:03.900 we heard flatten the curve was not that we were going to prevent people from getting it in the

00:08:09.980 long run, but that we were going to alleviate the pressure that would be put on our hospital

00:08:13.940 systems. That was the idea. That was why we heard that we needed to flatten the curve.

00:08:19.740 That, okay, we need to, we need to spread the spread out basically so that we don't have this

00:08:26.760 big spike so that hundreds of thousands of people are getting it at once. Our hospital systems and our

00:08:32.700 ICUs are overwhelmed and people run out of their PPE. People run out of, or hospitals run out of their

00:08:40.200 ventilators. That would be really bad because then people are going to needlessly die. And so that is

00:08:45.400 why everyone stayed inside. That is why everyone stayed isolated for those first 15 to 30 days.

00:08:51.160 Well, as it turns out, hospitals, most hospitals, the vast majority, I would say 99.9% of hospitals

00:08:57.900 in the United States during that time did not only, did not only not become overwhelmed. They didn't

00:09:04.260 even reach capacity. Most hospitals were under capacity during that time. A lot of hospitals are

00:09:09.660 still under capacity because they thought, okay, we're going to have this massive spike

00:09:14.020 of hospitalizations due to the coronavirus. This was back in March and April. And we don't want to

00:09:22.240 get overwhelmed. So we're going to cancel elective surgeries, elective procedures, and we are going to

00:09:28.340 make sure that we have all of the staff on deck and all of the supplies and all of the beds and

00:09:34.640 ventilators that we need. And so people who had to even get cancer treatment, people who had to

00:09:40.540 get, you know, knee replacement, hip replacement, all of these kinds of surgeries that maybe they

00:09:45.240 weren't lifesaving, but they were very important for people's health. Well, those were stalled in

00:09:50.140 order to make room for coronavirus patients. Well, that spike, that immediate spike that was supposed

00:09:56.260 to overwhelm our hospitals or at least put them at capacity never came. And so what happened,

00:10:00.460 hospital workers got furloughed. Some people got laid off. Hospitals were having a hard time making

00:10:06.920 ends meet because they just didn't have enough business. And so that didn't work. The 15 days to

00:10:14.960 slow the spread, apparently it wasn't as necessary as we thought that it was going to be. Now you could

00:10:22.300 argue because everyone stayed inside. That's why things were under capacity and the lockdown worked how

00:10:28.700 it was supposed to work. But even states that didn't lock down, they never saw the spike that

00:10:32.980 we were told that we were going to see. And we were also told there were going to be millions of people

00:10:37.700 who were going to die. The most liberal estimates were 2 million people. And so, of course, we all

00:10:43.200 thought together that we are going to come together, be unified, and we are going to stay inside to try to

00:10:48.260 alleviate the pressure from our hospital systems. That pressure never came. As it turns out, the death rate

00:10:53.540 was a lot lower than we originally thought. We were thinking it was like 1% and 2%, which would be a lot

00:11:01.020 higher than the flu. But as it turns out, for people under the age of 80, the death rate is about 0.1%.

00:11:08.540 So we're talking about a 99.9% in most cases, survival rate for people under 80 years old. And then we were

00:11:17.920 told after we slowed the spreader, after we stayed inside for 15 days, after we stayed inside for 30

00:11:24.560 days, that we still needed to stay inside. That people couldn't send their kids to school in the

00:11:30.640 spring. That people couldn't go back to work. That restaurants still couldn't open. Now, there were some

00:11:35.220 states that said, okay, we'll open at, you know, halfway capacity, or we will allow churches to meet

00:11:42.640 together as long as they are distancing, as long as they're wearing masks, whatever. But we still need

00:11:49.600 to be careful about all this. And then you have a lot of states that have continued to stay locked

00:11:55.360 down. And we were never told that the goal changed from slowing the spread or flattening the curve to

00:12:02.260 staying inside indefinitely until we get a vaccine. But now you have states like Illinois, for example,

00:12:07.180 that is saying, basically, we're going to stay locked down in a lot of places until there is a

00:12:12.840 vaccine or until there's a cure. Well, we were never told that. Like, when did that change? We never had

00:12:18.300 a press conference where someone said, where Dr. Fauci or Dr. Burke said, hey, actually, we don't just want

00:12:23.900 to slow the spread. It's not just about alleviating pressure from the hospitals. This is actually about

00:12:29.080 waiting around until we have a vaccine or until we have a cure. Well, that obviously made a lot of

00:12:35.640 people restless. And that made a lot of people concerned. How are they going to provide for their

00:12:40.180 families? Not everyone has a job where they can work remotely. Not everyone works for a company that will

00:12:45.640 allow you to work remotely indefinitely because productivity goes down. So the people who have to

00:12:51.860 provide for their families, the people who really want to send their kids to school so their kids have the

00:12:56.280 socialization that they need, so that they have the proper education that they need, they were all told, well,

00:13:02.360 if you're concerned about that at all, if you're concerned about the economy, if you're concerned

00:13:05.780 about your job, if you're concerned about your kids going to school, then you just want to kill

00:13:10.020 your grandma. Like, you just don't care about the elderly people. You just don't care about the

00:13:14.500 vulnerable. You don't care about all the people that are going to get sick and die. You don't care

00:13:18.580 about the frontline workers. You just care about yourself. You're selfish. But that's not true. It is not

00:13:23.720 selfish to think about the people that are made more vulnerable, that are put at a high risk

00:13:28.740 from social isolation indefinitely. Again, I think everyone was on the same page when we were given a

00:13:35.360 goal, when we were given a feasible goal, when we were given a timeline that said, okay, this is the

00:13:40.020 goal. This is why we're doing it. This is what we're going to try to do. And this is how many days we are

00:13:45.000 going to try to do it. Now, I understand things change. I understand new data comes in, you get new

00:13:49.680 information, but that should have been communicated to us better that, hey, this is the data that we have.

00:13:55.980 This is the new information that we have. And this is why we're telling you to stay inside

00:14:00.020 indefinitely. But you also, even if you did that, you can't be surprised by the fact that some people

00:14:05.220 are going to not just get restless, but they're going to get desperate. They're going to say,

00:14:10.060 okay, I'm sorry, a virus with a 99.9% survival rate for most people is not enough to keep me,

00:14:17.980 some people are saying, from providing for my family, opening my hair salon, making sure that my

00:14:22.660 employees are able to work and to provide for their families. There are people who struggle

00:14:28.400 with depression, who struggle with anxiety, who struggle with other mental health disorders

00:14:32.160 that depend on the daily or the weekly interaction with their counselors, with their psychologists

00:14:38.040 in order to survive. Certainly in order to thrive, there are people who are dying by suicide because

00:14:46.900 they don't have the weekly interaction with people, with their mental health professionals

00:14:53.880 that they were used to. There are people that aren't getting the life-saving procedures that they

00:14:58.660 would have gotten. There are people who aren't getting diagnosed with things like cancer because it's so

00:15:03.940 hard to get an appointment in some places right now. So there are risks. There are the risk of death

00:15:11.300 for a lot of people, non-COVID-related death for a lot of people because of these lockdowns. But we

00:15:16.260 heard by the powers that be, by the pundits on the internet, by left-wing journalists that you are

00:15:22.000 selfish if you even talk about the economy. You're selfish if you even talk about jobs. You're selfish if

00:15:27.620 you even talk about the downside of keeping people locked down. We don't actually know if lockdowns are

00:15:33.360 what's helping slow the spread. And also, it's not selfish to talk about it when you don't know

00:15:39.340 what the goal is or when the end date is. And so you've got a lot of people restless, a lot of people

00:15:45.480 desperate, a lot of people questioning things because it all seems so political. So there may

00:15:52.360 be a few people out there who think coronavirus is some big conspiracy theory, that it is all a myth,

00:15:59.280 that it's not really happening. I certainly am not one of those people. I don't know very many people

00:16:03.880 who actually believe that the coronavirus isn't real. I'm sure there are people out there. I know

00:16:10.040 there are. I've seen them on the internet. I'm sure there are people who think that it's

00:16:13.520 all made up. I am certainly not one of those people. I know people who have had coronavirus,

00:16:18.200 who have suffered through coronavirus. I know people who have friends and loved ones who have

00:16:23.020 had to go to the hospital, who have been in the ICU, who have been on ventilators. So it's not a fake

00:16:28.500 virus. It is certainly a real virus. The reason, though, why there is so much mistrust, why people

00:16:34.060 are so restless, why they are so desperate, why there are even conspiracy theories surrounding

00:16:40.740 the coronavirus and why people are so eager to find answers and to find some kind of solid solution

00:16:47.840 to it is because everything is so political, especially in America. And I think that's why

00:16:53.760 we're in the predicament that we are now, that there are still cases that in some states are

00:16:58.800 rising, that there are still lockdowns happening. There are still headlines every day about the

00:17:03.780 coronavirus several months later. I think one of the reasons is because things are so political.

00:17:11.200 And that's just true about American life in general. We make things more political,

00:17:15.060 I think, than other countries do. Things are very partisan. It was, let's see if I can find it.

00:17:20.780 I read this quote the other day by Alexis de Tocqueville. Basically, it said, like,

00:17:26.240 the whole of American life is, the whole of American life is a fight. The whole of American

00:17:32.720 life is either a revolution, you're either living by chance, or you're fighting for something. And that

00:17:38.580 is so true. Every American generation feels like this is the fight of American history that we are,

00:17:45.520 that we are waging. We are fighting for liberty. We are fighting for our rights. We are fighting for

00:17:51.720 the future. I don't think any generation has felt completely apathetic toward America's future. We

00:17:58.500 always feel like we are on the precipice of losing everything. And I think that's part of what people

00:18:03.980 are feeling right now with these draconian restrictions and the economy tanking and the

00:18:10.500 politicization of a virus and of statistics and of science due to the fact that Trump is president

00:18:18.500 and we're in an election year. And so that creates a lot of mistrust, I think, in the public when you

00:18:25.380 have all of those factors coming together and people are seeing a lot of inconsistency. People

00:18:31.200 are seeing a lot of hypocrisy, not just from people like Dr. Fauci and even the Surgeon General.

00:18:36.080 They said a few months ago, ardently, passionately, that we should not be buying masks. Passionately,

00:18:43.620 they said, do not wear a mask. Dr. Fauci was in an interview and he said, oh, you know, a mask might

00:18:49.440 protect you from a large droplet like launching into your mouth or something like that, but it's

00:18:55.280 really not going to protect you. So don't wear masks. Don't buy masks. The Surgeon General said,

00:18:59.960 stop buying masks. We were told then that it was almost selfish to buy a mask, that if you bought

00:19:06.820 the PPE that the hospitals who we were told were going to get overwhelmed, desperately needed, then

00:19:12.420 you were selfish. And so I think some people were embarrassed to wear a mask in public just a few

00:19:17.680 months ago. Then we were not told we absolutely had to wear a mask in March. We were not told we

00:19:22.200 absolutely had to wear a mask in April when the cases were highest. We weren't told that in May,

00:19:28.100 but all of a sudden, just over the past few weeks, we have the same passion that came with telling us

00:19:35.780 not to wear masks that is now with telling us to wear masks. And so it's like the thing of

00:19:45.440 bullies right now to say that you are a murderer and you are a terrible person if you do not wear a

00:19:51.500 mask. And I am pro wearing a mask. I'm fine with that. I have never not complied with the request of

00:19:57.480 businesses or any location or people for me to wear a mask. It's fine. I was pro mask when they were

00:20:03.160 telling us not to wear masks. But I do understand that the science is mixed on that. And I do

00:20:08.120 understand that there's a lot of distrust because the experts that we are being told to listen to

00:20:12.720 said just a few months ago, please do not buy masks. Now they're telling us that we have to wear masks,

00:20:17.800 that that's the only thing that's going to slow the spread. You see people outside by themselves

00:20:21.720 like running in masks. And so I think it's okay for people to be a little bit skeptical about that and

00:20:26.600 say, hang on, where did this come from and why? Now, I don't understand the passion behind people

00:20:34.900 refusing to wear masks when a private business just requests you to. I also don't understand

00:20:39.880 people who get angry at other people who are wearing masks. That's weird. But there are also

00:20:46.400 people who are wearing masks who are getting really angry at other people who are not wearing masks,

00:20:52.480 even when they're by themselves. There was this story in the New York Post about a couple

00:20:56.460 months ago who was in San Diego. They were having a picnic by themselves, just them and their dog,

00:21:00.640 just by themselves outside. And this old lady comes up with her mask on and she starts yelling,

00:21:06.080 yelling to them about not wearing a mask and sprays pepper spray in their eyes because they're not

00:21:12.000 wearing a mask. It's crazy. So people have just lost their ever loving minds and seem to have forgotten

00:21:18.420 that only a couple months ago, we were told that masks didn't work. And we were never, again,

00:21:23.960 there wasn't a press conference that told us, hey, I know we said this, now we're saying this,

00:21:30.140 and here is why. I think that that kind of communication would really help all of the

00:21:35.460 chaos that's going on and all of the pushback that's going on. But it's not only that. It's not

00:21:40.300 moving goalposts. It's not only changing mandates. It's not only the indefinite timelines. It's also

00:21:50.160 the arbitrary nature of some of the policies that some politicians, that some governors are putting

00:21:56.340 forth in their state. And so there was a Supreme Court case that unfortunately went in the way of

00:22:03.540 went in the way of the liberal justices. And it was the state of Nevada versus I think it was Calvary

00:22:10.720 Chapel, a church in Nevada. So it was about the arbitrary and discriminatory lockdown policies that

00:22:18.340 the governor had put in place that said, hey, casinos can be open. Bowling alleys can be open.

00:22:24.460 Basically, if you are in entertainment in Nevada, you can do whatever you want to. Yes,

00:22:29.360 there are some restrictions, like you have to kind of limit your capacity. But the restrictions for

00:22:34.960 churches were far greater to the point to where churches couldn't even meet with their full

00:22:40.280 congregations, no matter if they were wearing masks, no matter if they were distanced or not.

00:22:45.140 But you can go to a casino in Nevada and you can basically do whatever you want. You can be

00:22:50.140 surrounded, you know, you can surround an entire craps table with a bunch of your friends without

00:22:55.060 wearing masks. And it's no problem in Nevada. But if you go to church and you're six feet apart

00:22:59.340 from everyone except for your family and you're all wearing masks, that's a problem. Well,

00:23:03.420 unfortunately, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Nevada. Nevada, I'm sorry, I think it's

00:23:10.100 Nevada. Some of you from Nevada always tell me that I say it wrong. The governor of Nevada,

00:23:15.780 they ruled in favor of him, which is a clear violation of the First Amendment. You are not

00:23:20.940 supposed to be discriminating against churches in that way. So I think that that's another reason why

00:23:26.740 there's so much unrest, why there's so much distrust. It's not because of the restrictiveness

00:23:31.280 primarily of the policies. It's because of the arbitrary nature of the policies, the discrimination

00:23:37.480 against places of worship, for example. Just this week in Grace Community Church in LA, that's

00:23:44.440 John MacArthur's church. They decided, you know what, we are going to buck up against Gavin Newsom's policy

00:23:50.820 that said that we can't meet together after looking at how arbitrary his policies are.

00:23:56.300 John MacArthur actually said this in his sermon. Liquor stores have been able to stay open. Planned

00:24:01.400 Parenthood and all abortion clinics have been able to stay open with very few restrictions. But churches

00:24:06.700 have been forced closed for a virus that has a 99.9% survival rate for people under the age of 80.

00:24:15.140 And so he said, you know what, we answer to Christ. We don't answer to Caesar. We don't answer

00:24:20.180 to Gavin Newsom. And so we are going to forge ahead with the body of Christ, and we are going to meet

00:24:26.320 together. And more power to them. There were Christians who disagreed with that. But I honestly

00:24:32.660 think it was very important for John MacArthur and his church to do that, to stand up and to show the

00:24:38.320 rest of the country, especially Christian America, what it looks like to obey Christ boldly in the

00:24:44.880 face of discriminatory and unjust policies. And I think that's a huge reason why people are unwilling

00:24:54.160 to submit to a lot of the policies and the restrictions, or they're at least angry about

00:25:00.520 submitting to the policies and restrictions that their governors, that their city officials have put

00:25:05.120 in place because it's so clearly political. It's so clearly discriminatory. It's so clearly

00:25:10.600 partisan. It's so clearly arbitrary. That's what's frustrating people. That plus the gaslighting,

00:25:17.460 and that's the overused word of the century, but it just happens so often. The gaslighting that's

00:25:22.560 happening in the media that is praising Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and is eviscerating

00:25:29.500 Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, simply because DeSantis is a Republican and Cuomo is a

00:25:37.760 Democrat. Cuomo did a terrible job. By every measure, he did a terrible job. And yet you have Dr. Fauci

00:25:43.860 coming out and saying, oh, everyone needs to be like New York. Tens of thousands of people died in New

00:25:50.340 York. Hundreds of thousands of people got the coronavirus in New York, despite those very strict

00:25:56.240 restrictions and lockdowns. By the way, that was the epicenter. If we didn't have New York in all of

00:26:03.860 their cases, America would be almost nowhere in the running for most coronavirus cases or most

00:26:10.780 coronavirus deaths in the world. I mean, New York really brought us up to the top because they handled

00:26:16.840 it so terribly. And there were also a lot of very disturbing stories from nurses in the hospitals about

00:26:25.460 the mistreatment of patients and just the apathy towards patients and just so quickly putting them

00:26:29.960 on ventilators, which we've actually found out putting people on ventilators, especially too early,

00:26:34.360 actually kills people with coronavirus. It doesn't help them. But Andrew Cuomo did an absolutely

00:26:40.180 terrible job for the first time in 100 years, not until May, not until May did they sanitize the

00:26:47.980 subway system. They didn't stop running the subway system at night until May. He sent positive

00:26:54.260 coronavirus patients back into nursing homes before they were actually healed. Ron DeSantis didn't do

00:27:00.140 those things. Now, you can criticize Ron DeSantis. I think it's fine for journalists to do that.

00:27:04.720 But to criticize Ron DeSantis and then praise Andrew Cuomo, that is the kind of hypocrisy. That's the kind

00:27:11.160 of duplicitousness and obvious partisanship that makes people not trust the media. And plus, the media have

00:27:16.900 been fear mongers about this all along. They highlight the very rare cases of a young, healthy person dying

00:27:23.080 in order to propagate panic porn. And people see that and then they weigh it against the data and

00:27:30.580 they say, OK, well, this isn't a real representation of what's going on. I don't think I can trust the

00:27:35.620 media at all. I don't think I can trust the experts at all because of these shifting goalposts. And so

00:27:41.740 you have a lot of people pushing back. On top of all of that, I think this was the real thing that did it

00:27:47.040 were the protests. And so we were told, you have to stay inside. You can't bury your dead mom. You

00:27:53.680 can't bury your dead child. You can't have the funeral that you want. You can't have the wedding

00:28:00.560 that you want. You can't have the honeymoon that you want. You can't have the celebrations, the

00:28:07.060 graduations that you want. All of these major milestones, some really good, some really tragic.

00:28:12.540 You can't celebrate those. If you are someone who struggles with manic depression, you can't go in

00:28:17.980 and see your counselor. You can't go in and see your psychologist. If you have a certain procedure

00:28:24.260 in order to help whatever aspect of your health, this procedure would help. You can't go do that.

00:28:30.320 You have to put all of that off. Everyone had to make these huge, major sacrifices, life-altering

00:28:35.800 sacrifices in their lives. Kids had to be plucked out of school without any consent, without any

00:28:41.360 explanation whatsoever. Kids who at home suffer from abuse, they suffer from neglect, they suffer

00:28:46.620 sometimes from sexual abuse. They were now forced into isolation in their homes without any respite.

00:28:52.500 A lot of kids, their only place of refuge is the school. That's the only where, the only place they

00:28:58.260 get their welfare checks. Well, they were forced into dangerous situations by staying at home. People

00:29:04.280 lost their jobs. And so we all made these huge sacrifices despite the politicization of the virus,

00:29:09.780 despite the shifting goalposts, despite the discriminatory policies of a lot of these

00:29:16.040 politicians and governors. And then all of a sudden, at the end of May, beginning of June,

00:29:20.500 there are hundreds of thousands of people out on the street protesting, some of them with masks,

00:29:26.300 some of them not with masks. And not only that, but then you had rioters, you had looters,

00:29:32.540 you had people burning down buildings. And still to this day, 60 plus days later, you have people who

00:29:40.740 are rioting and looting and burning in the streets of Portland and Seattle and Denver and Chicago and

00:29:48.980 New York, many of them without masks. I'll just show you this one, this one video that is just a

00:29:54.280 perfect depiction of what's going on in a lot of places. And so yeah, people are going to look at

00:30:09.660 that and they're going to say, wait, hang on, I couldn't bury my mom who died of cancer a couple

00:30:14.540 months ago. But these people can twerk without masks on, like literally thousands of people slam

00:30:21.120 together body to body. And you won't see one headline about it. In fact, we were told back

00:30:26.400 in the beginning of June when people were saying, hang on, so what? Coronavirus is over? Is over now?

00:30:34.140 You had people, you had people in the media saying, putting out headlines saying, the protests aren't

00:30:40.620 going to cause a spike in coronavirus. No, the protests are not to blame. No, this has nothing to

00:30:46.600 do with the protests whatsoever. The spike that we're seeing two weeks after the George Floyd

00:30:50.200 protests, nothing to do with coronavirus whatsoever. We were told that if we tried to go back to work,

00:30:57.860 or if we wanted to provide for our families, or if we wanted to do the things that we have to do to

00:31:02.540 survive and to provide for ourselves, then we were murderers, that we were ruthless, that we were

00:31:07.340 heartless, that we lacked compassion, that we didn't care about old people. And then you had people

00:31:11.820 body to body, thousands of people in the street, not just peacefully protesting. Although I believe that

00:31:17.220 those people do have the First Amendment right to peacefully protest, I don't believe in restricting

00:31:21.620 their ability to peacefully protest, even in a pandemic. I don't think the First Amendment

00:31:26.160 is dependent on whether or not we are in a pandemic or not. My point is that it's clearly political,

00:31:33.980 that it's clearly arbitrary, that the media has a narrative that they want to push, that they want

00:31:38.680 to push the panic porn when it's convenient for them. But when they want to support the protest,

00:31:42.420 they're going to support the protest. I'll put up on the screen, there are two tweets by CNN on the

00:31:51.480 same day, and I'll read them to you. Here's the first tweet. CNN, nearly two months after George

00:31:57.160 Floyd's death set off massive national and international protests, Black Lives Matter

00:32:01.540 demonstrations are still happening to places around the US. And so it shows a whole big picture of the

00:32:07.800 protesters all slammed together, some of them wearing masks, some of them not. Same day video

00:32:13.520 from a Northern California outdoor religious concert shows hundreds of people crowding together

00:32:18.200 and most of them not wearing masks, drawing criticism from a local health department that says the

00:32:24.640 gathering violated state coronavirus rules. So CNN and the rest of the liberal media are concerned with

00:32:30.780 the coronavirus when it comes to religious people meeting together, but not when it comes to

00:32:35.320 protesters protesting, rioters rioting, rioting, looters looting, and arsonists arsoning, burning

00:32:45.040 buildings on, on putting buildings on fire. So that is the duplicitousness that a lot of people are

00:32:51.900 seeing, that a lot of people are disturbed by. So if you want to know why we're still in this

00:32:56.400 predicament, why there's a debate over masks, why there's a debate over distancing, why there is a

00:33:01.460 pushback to a lot of these policies. It is not because people don't care. You have to understand

00:33:07.620 that the reason is because people have made this political. Politicians have made this political.

00:33:13.960 Politicians have tried to use the coronavirus as a bludgeon against Trump, even when he's done the

00:33:18.200 right things. I'm not saying he's done the right things all along, but when he has done the right

00:33:24.420 things, they have still tried to manipulate it to blame the entire thing on Trump. The politicians that

00:33:31.260 have failed, like Andrew Cuomo, still trying to blame it on Trump. You've got people like Lori

00:33:35.580 Lightfoot, the failed mayor of Chicago, trying to blame it on Trump. And then you have the media

00:33:40.940 praising the protests, saying nothing about the coronavirus, finding so-called experts to come

00:33:46.100 out and say, oh no, the protests have nothing to do with coronavirus spikes whatsoever, but these

00:33:51.120 religious gatherings do. Even churches that have families that are distanced, wearing masks inside

00:33:56.900 their buildings, they're the reason for the spike. The people who just want to provide for their

00:34:01.780 families, they're the reason for the spike. When you see the teachers union in LA saying that the only

00:34:07.500 way that we are going to open back up is if you ban charter schools, if you defund the police, if you

00:34:13.940 provide Medicare for all, and you do all of these things that are on our far left agenda, you see that

00:34:20.340 this is not about health for a lot of people. It's obviously not about the health of the kids. I mean,

00:34:25.160 teachers unions, I will keep saying this. I might say this every episode until it happens. Abolish

00:34:32.120 freaking teachers unions. They're evil. They're evil. I've talked to so many of you public school

00:34:37.760 teachers over the past few days and a couple weeks who have realized that being a part of the union is

00:34:44.200 probably not in your best interest. It's certainly not in the best interest of the country, but you

00:34:48.480 were told when you became a teacher, you were a young teacher and you were told you have to join the

00:34:52.400 teachers union or else if you get sued, you're not gonna have anyone to represent you or pay your legal

00:34:56.060 fees. And so you were bullied into it because they want more people. So they have more voting power. So

00:35:01.040 they have more sway over over the politicians. They just want more power. It's like any bloated

00:35:08.240 bureaucracy. That's what a teachers union is. It exists for itself. It doesn't exist for the teachers.

00:35:13.440 It doesn't exist for the students. If you're curious about this, you can go back and listen to last Friday's

00:35:18.100 episode with Corey DeAngelis. We talked about this a lot more. Teachers unions are evil. And by the way,

00:35:23.360 we shouldn't have public unions in the first place. Public unions are immoral. Even police unions. I

00:35:28.820 don't believe that we should have police unions. Our tax dollars are going to these public unions and

00:35:34.200 then they are using our tax dollars to fund politicians that most of us Republicans are not

00:35:40.560 voting for. And so it's immoral. It's unethical. It's wrong. We shouldn't have public unions. We especially

00:35:45.740 shouldn't have teachers unions that are constantly fighting against school choice for students, which

00:35:52.300 it disproportionately affects minority and poor students. They don't want charter schools,

00:36:00.060 which have a much better performance and success rates than these public schools do. And so people see

00:36:07.040 things like this, the politicization of all of this. And they realize that for a lot of people,

00:36:12.680 for a lot of people in the media, unfortunately, for a lot of people in teachers unions, for a lot of

00:36:16.640 politicians who are arbitrarily covering these stories, who are arbitrarily slapping on restrictions,

00:36:23.040 who are arbitrarily or discriminatorily deciding how under what demands they are willing to go back to

00:36:30.860 school so kids can get an education, they're realizing that it's just not sincere, that it's not about

00:36:36.680 health. And so you just can't blame people for being skeptical about it all. That is why we are in

00:36:42.340 this mess. If it wasn't political, then we could all say, okay, this is really happening. This is

00:36:47.760 really what the data says. Let's hold every politician to the same standard. Let's hold

00:36:51.340 Donald Trump to the same standard that we held Barack Obama during the swine flu. Let's hold

00:36:56.300 DeSantis to the same standard that we are holding Cuomo. Let's not generate panic porn on a daily basis

00:37:02.340 and pick these most extreme and rare cases of the very young and healthy person dying. Let's cover this

00:37:08.700 in a way that is actually representative of what's going on. Let's be communicative about why we

00:37:14.440 changed the goals, why we're waiting around until there's a vaccine, why we decided it's important to

00:37:19.520 wear masks. Let's hold the protesters and the rioters and the looters, especially to the same

00:37:23.900 standards that we hold the people who are worshiping together. Let's hold everyone to the

00:37:28.540 same standards. Let's stop making this partisan. Let's stop making this political. And I guarantee you,

00:37:33.600 people will take your advice and take your guidelines and take your restrictions more

00:37:38.920 seriously. If there actually is a way to crush this so that there are no more cases, then we are

00:37:45.500 going to have to start by making this not political. But if we're not willing to make it not political,

00:37:49.460 then I don't believe that you really desire for the coronavirus to go away. I just don't. I think

00:37:56.800 that this is more about, for some people, making sure that Trump doesn't get reelected. And in order to

00:38:02.520 do that, you've got to create as much chaos as possible. Well, the rioting and the looting

00:38:06.820 contributes to the chaos that a lot of people believe will help Trump lose in November. And so

00:38:13.140 they can't demonize those, but so does lingering coronavirus. And so I'm not saying that all of this

00:38:20.320 is a myth. I'm not saying that all of this is a conspiracy theory. I just think a lot of people,

00:38:24.200 unfortunately, are capitalizing on these flashpoints in order to create as much chaos as possible

00:38:31.780 to make sure that Trump doesn't get reelected. Absolutely. I mean, this is really a tactic of

00:38:37.900 either side, but this is certainly especially a leftist tactic to create as much chaos as possible

00:38:43.920 to create problems and then to present themselves as the solution. That is what they always do.

00:38:49.140 Whether there is a problem or not, they create a problem. They say that there's a problem and then

00:38:53.620 they present themselves as a solution. For example, Joe Biden tweeted the other day that

00:38:57.640 women, especially women of color, haven't had a fair shake in America. And when I become president,

00:39:03.420 I'm going to make sure that women work. Well, female unemployment is the lowest that it was the

00:39:09.420 lowest that it had ever been under President Trump. This whole idea of a wage gap between men and women

00:39:15.180 in America is false. There is not a wage gap between men and women when you control for all factors.

00:39:21.320 So when you look at job experience, when you look at education, your education background,

00:39:27.480 when you look at job title, when you look at all the factors that play into what job you have and

00:39:33.520 how much you get paid, men and women make the exact same thing. One dollar for every dollar that a man

00:39:39.860 makes, a woman makes. That's statistic. 79 cents to every dollar that a man makes that they tout all

00:39:46.140 the time is the discriminatory gender wage gap that has nothing to do with discrimination. There is no

00:39:51.240 evidence that has anything to do with discrimination. It has everything to do with what the choices most of

00:39:56.320 the time that women make. They either choose to be a caretaker. They choose to stay home more. They

00:40:02.060 choose not to work overtime as much as their male counterparts do. They have different majors. They

00:40:08.820 have different kinds of jobs. They have different strengths and talents. I mean, there is nothing,

00:40:13.180 there's no discrimination that is stopping women from having some of the jobs like electricians and

00:40:18.760 plumbers that are these blue collar hands-on jobs, but make a good amount of money. A lot of women

00:40:24.480 would rather not work than do a job like that. That's simply not true of most men. Most men

00:40:30.220 are willing to do any job, no matter how dirty, no matter how grimy, no matter how hands-on, in order

00:40:35.660 to work, in order to provide for themselves and their families. It's not a knock on women. It's just a

00:40:40.800 difference in women. So this is just one example of something that Democrats constantly do. They create

00:40:45.880 a problem and then they present themselves as a solution. Now, I will say, Republicans can do the same

00:40:52.440 thing. Not in the exact same way, but the fact of the matter is, here's the ugly truth about partisan

00:40:59.220 politics, probably anywhere, but maybe especially in America, is that neither party would be able to

00:41:04.400 effectively campaign. Neither party would ever win if there weren't problems that they know get their

00:41:10.860 base riled up. So for example, if the borders were completely closed, like if we built a wall around

00:41:19.340 America and even like between California and the rest of the union, like if we built a wall to make

00:41:25.660 sure that no illegal immigrants could ever get in, if we deported all illegal immigrants in the

00:41:32.360 country, well then Republicans wouldn't have something to campaign on quite as much. They

00:41:38.020 wouldn't be able to talk about MS-13. They wouldn't be able to talk about this issue that a lot of

00:41:42.980 Republicans care about. If they actually solved the issue, they wouldn't be able to capitalize on the

00:41:48.860 fear that a lot of people have or the concern that a lot of people have of illegal immigration. So

00:41:53.740 there almost isn't an incentive to actually solve the problem. And that goes for a lot of different

00:42:00.640 problems. For example, if abortion was completely abolished, that would take away a very big portion

00:42:08.960 of the Republican platform, of the Republican ability to campaign on a moral concern that a lot

00:42:16.840 of Republicans have. And the same goes for Democrats. Now, I think that it's worse personally

00:42:21.940 on the Democratic side. And maybe that's just my bias showing, but it seems like they actually create

00:42:29.540 the problems, not just allow them to linger, but create the problems or say that there's a problem

00:42:34.040 when there's not a problem. And then they say that they're the solution, something that you have to

00:42:38.140 realize about the Democratic side as well, is that they would not exist if people didn't believe that

00:42:44.720 they were oppressed. They have to have people who are poor and who think that the reason that

00:42:49.400 they're poor is because of mean Republicans or who think the reason that they're poor is because of

00:42:53.440 rich people. They have to have people who believe that they are constantly being put down by the man

00:42:59.460 who haven't had a fair shake in life because the Democratic platform is saying, yeah, you have been

00:43:05.460 oppressed by systems. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with your choices. And the

00:43:09.220 Democratic Party has to come in. The government has to come in and save you. That is the basically the

00:43:15.160 entirety of the Democratic platform. And so if people weren't poor, if people were not oppressed, if there

00:43:21.680 was no inequality, then the Democrats wouldn't have anything to campaign on. So you have to see that they

00:43:27.460 also have an incentive to keep those problems that they're talking about solving going in order to

00:43:33.320 defeat Republicans. And so that's just the ugly reality of the two-party system. That's the ugly

00:43:39.420 reality of partisanship in America is that both parties in a way are incentivized to make sure that

00:43:46.700 the problems that they campaign on are continuing problems, that they linger forever. And that is why

00:43:53.620 we as Christians, really anyone, but especially as Christians, we can't trust any president or any

00:44:00.280 politician to save us. They're just not going to. And I'm not saying that all politicians are bad,

00:44:07.060 but it is the nature of politics to over-promise, to under-deliver, to exacerbate, exaggerate,

00:44:16.300 to let linger problems that maybe could easily be solved and maybe most Americans are on board with.

00:44:24.060 But unfortunately, a lot of politicians, they get votes because of chaos.

00:44:29.840 They get votes because of division. They get votes because of false narratives, of false narratives

00:44:35.820 of oppression for women, for example. And so there is an incentive, unfortunately, in Washington, D.C.

00:44:44.600 and in even local politics to make sure that people are divided, to make sure that there is chaos,

00:44:49.900 to make sure that people are envious of each other, that groups hate each other, that there is a lot of

00:44:54.660 resentment against each other, that people stay either actually oppressed or feel that they're

00:44:59.780 oppressed. And you also have to understand, I mean, a party like the Democrats who prop up

00:45:04.980 institutions like the Teachers Union, who prop up abortion mills like Planned Parenthood,

00:45:11.820 they're talking about, you know, caring about black lives. They're talking about caring about the poor.

00:45:16.800 They're talking about caring about the vulnerable. Well, you've got two very vulnerable groups right there.

00:45:20.520 You've got poor children that desperately need school choice and charter schools, and you've got

00:45:24.240 babies in the womb, the most defenseless class of people in this country that the Democrats cannot

00:45:28.880 bring themselves to defend. And they also, by the way, most Democrats cannot call out China,

00:45:34.780 who has over a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps where their organs are being harvested,

00:45:42.800 where they are forced into slave labor, where the women in China are having forced abortions,

00:45:47.780 enforced sterilization procedures, where their babies are being ripped from their arms as soon

00:45:52.960 as they're born because they violated the policy in China, which says that Uyghur women are only

00:45:57.760 allowed to have one or two children. It's interesting that conservatives in America seem to be the

00:46:02.980 ones predominantly calling that out. And Democrats who claim that they care about oppression, who claim

00:46:08.340 that they care about the least of these, they can't bring themselves to stand up for kids going to

00:46:12.320 school. They can't bring themselves to stand up for babies in the womb. They can't bring

00:46:15.220 themselves to stand up for the very marginalized and oppressed in China. And don't tell me that

00:46:20.560 it's just because, by the way, that they are focused on domestic problems, because most of

00:46:25.360 those Democrats who are not willing to call out China have no problem with calling out Israel.

00:46:30.520 And so we can't pretend like they take issue with criticizing international affairs. It just depends

00:46:38.220 on who it is. And by the way, not just the politicians, but also these woke corporations

00:46:45.600 like Nike, who use slave labor from China in order to make their products. I'm not someone who

00:46:52.980 rallies people to boycott. I'm not someone who is going to say like, oh, you're not a good person

00:46:58.260 if you don't boycott Nike. That is the decision that my family and I have made. And I understand that

00:47:05.240 kind of makes me responsible to look at where all my clothes are made. And I'll just admit,

00:47:11.380 like I haven't done that. But Nike being so hypocritical, saying they care about so-called

00:47:17.100 racial and social justice here in the United States. Kaepernick saying that he cares about

00:47:22.040 those things and using slave labor to make their items. And not only that, but they are unwilling

00:47:30.280 to talk about the injustices that go on in China against millions of people there. It's not,

00:47:37.020 by the way, just the Uyghur Muslims that are being discriminated against. It's also Christians. It's

00:47:42.740 also Africans. China is colonizing Africa and South America. They're catching these poor countries in

00:47:48.780 debt traps by saying, here, we'll build a railway here that's going to generate a lot of money. When it

00:47:53.580 generates a lot of money, you can pay us back. They know that these poor countries, that these railways are

00:47:58.240 not going to generate a lot of money. These countries won't be able to pay China back. And

00:48:02.020 then they will be caught in a debt trap to China and they will be indebted to China and China will

00:48:05.600 be able to take over. That's what's happening from China in continents like South America and Africa.

00:48:12.940 And the people here who are so woke, who support Nike, who support Colin Kaepernick, who support

00:48:18.320 Apple, all of these organizations and these people who talk about the importance of fighting against

00:48:23.600 oppression and injustice, a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them have nothing to say

00:48:28.620 about China. The Democratic Party is eerily quiet. Not all of them, but compared to conservatives and

00:48:35.320 Republicans, they're eerily quiet when it comes to China. I mean, they won't even call, they get so mad

00:48:40.540 when it's called the China virus, they call it the Trump virus. Well, that doesn't make any sense.

00:48:44.060 It didn't originate here. It didn't come from here. It came from China. So I just be careful,

00:48:51.060 be careful who you, whose narratives you latch on to. And I'm not trying to convince you to be a

00:48:58.380 Republican. Believe it or not, that's never been the goal of this podcast. Just realize that a lot of

00:49:05.240 the people who say that they care for the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, they can't bring

00:49:09.600 themselves. Like the Democratic Party, they just cannot bring themselves to defend some of the most

00:49:16.300 marginalized and the most oppressed, not just in our country, but in the world. And so I don't, I don't

00:49:23.580 understand where they get off in trying to make that kind of argument. Again, you could argue that

00:49:28.420 Republicans have their own lack of compassion that you can criticize, but you can't say that the better

00:49:33.980 alternative, the more compassionate alternative is the Democratic Party. There's just absolutely no

00:49:38.620 evidence of that. And there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. Abortion, their support of China,

00:49:46.080 their desire to abolish charter schools. I mean, you just, you can't tell me that they care for the

00:49:52.180 oppressed in any way, shape or form. Okay. Kind of went off on a tangent there. Let's see. There was

00:49:58.020 one piece of encouragement that I just wanted to leave you with. Let's see if I wrote it down.

00:50:06.120 There was, I was reading in Romans, I believe it's Romans, is it Romans 4, 5? No, Romans 3, 4,

00:50:15.480 and then Romans 4, 16 through 25. I was reading the other day and I just wanted to encourage you. So

00:50:21.500 Romans 3, 4 says, let God be true, though everyone were a liar. And then Romans 4, 16 through 25 says,

00:50:29.000 God can do anything and will keep his promises. We hope against hope in the same way that Abraham

00:50:33.840 hoped against hope that God was going to make from him a nation, even though he knew that he was old

00:50:40.100 in age, even though he knew that his wife, Sarah was barren. He hoped in God. He believed in God.

00:50:45.320 And the Bible said it was counted to him as righteousness. And as Romans 3, 4 says, let God be

00:50:51.160 true, though everyone were a liar. So in this chaotic world where you feel like you are alone,

00:50:58.660 you feel like you are completely isolated, maybe among your friends, among your community,

00:51:02.980 maybe among your family, or even among your church, when you are the only one who you feel

00:51:10.620 has clung to the truth amidst all of this madness and hasn't bought into the social justice divisive

00:51:17.540 narrative that is being propagated by so many people, both in and outside of the church.

00:51:23.700 Our reliance should be on the word of God and on Jesus Christ himself, who the Bible says

00:51:29.640 is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And even if everyone were a liar, even if the entire

00:51:36.160 world around you is lying, is propagating myths and narratives that you know are not true, that does

00:51:43.620 not change the truth of God. You can rest on the fact that God does not change. You can rely on his

00:51:49.200 word, which is our objective source of wisdom and truth and peace and the standards of righteousness

00:51:55.160 and good and evil. You don't have to be on this hamster wheel of trying to figure out what is true

00:52:01.560 and what is right and what is good. God has graciously given us that standard in his word. Let God be true,

00:52:07.100 though everyone were a liar. Everyone around us, it might seem like some days, is a liar. Everyone has an

00:52:14.820 agenda. Everyone is partisan. Everyone is picking and choosing the things that they talk about and

00:52:21.080 cover. And that's just kind of human nature. And you might feel like you don't know what to believe,

00:52:25.940 but we can trust in the fact that God is true, that his word is true, that it's infallible,

00:52:30.140 that it's inerrant. And in this crazy, ever-changing world where truth is subjective and elusive,

00:52:36.040 we can trust in that. And that gives us so much peace. And like Abraham, we can hope against hope.

00:52:41.440 We can look around us and say, it doesn't seem like God is going to deliver us. It doesn't seem

00:52:46.040 like we can ever reconcile. It doesn't seem like there's a way forward. It seems like the only

00:52:50.400 future that we have is one of suffering and chaos. We know as Christians that that is not true. Whether

00:52:56.420 it's on earth or whether it is in heaven, there will be perfect, unified peace and absolute defeat

00:53:03.800 of evil. And we can hope for that. Even when, in the same way that Abraham looked around and it

00:53:10.680 looked like there was no way that God could answer or fulfill his promises, we can trust

00:53:15.500 just like Abraham did that he will. Even if circumstances seem dire, even if things seem

00:53:20.520 impossible, God will be glorified. That is always his number one goal. He will be glorified. And

00:53:25.200 as Christians, his glory is always our good. So I encourage you to read Romans 3 and 4. I also

00:53:30.980 encourage you, if you didn't memorize Romans 8 with us a couple months ago, to read that,

00:53:35.780 especially the last few verses, there are just no more confidence-inducing verses than the last

00:53:41.680 few verses of Romans 8. So I just wanted, I just wanted to end with some positivity after all of

00:53:49.080 this craziness. Okay, I'll be back here on Friday with another awesome interview. I'll see you then.

00:54:05.780 I'll see you then.

00:54:07.780 I'll see you then.

00:54:13.500 ~~

00:54:15.420 ~~~~

00:54:29.980 ~~~

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 29, 2020

Ep 281 ｜ Why We're Still In this COVID Mess

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