Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 30, 2020


Ep 320 ｜ Riots in Philly, Rest in Christ


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

170.24162

Word Count

7,823

Sentence Count

487

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week doing
00:00:15.300 things a little bit differently on Relatable today. Typically, we do our interview on Friday,
00:00:20.520 but today we're going to talk about the things that are going on in Philadelphia. We are going
00:00:25.620 to re-look at some of the statistics surrounding police brutality, and we're going to talk about
00:00:32.000 the effects of rioting and looting, how we should look at that from a Christian perspective. I'm also
00:00:37.160 going to give you some solace about all the craziness and chaos coming from the Word of God.
00:00:42.760 And then on Monday, I'm going to have an amazing interview. I've already recorded it with Rod
00:00:47.580 Dreher. He is the author of a few books. One of them is The Benedict Option that came out a few
00:00:52.480 years ago. And then his most recent book is Live Not by Lies. And guys, this was a fascinating
00:00:59.840 conversation. It was incredible. He is such a resource for knowledge and for Christian wisdom,
00:01:06.280 but we talked about how America is in this pre-totalitarian state and how Christian dissidents
00:01:15.300 can push back on the impending doom and control of communism and what we should be doing to resist
00:01:24.480 it in a God-glorifying, church-uniting way. You are going to be motivated by that conversation,
00:01:32.160 but also, I hope, highly encouraged by it as well. So please tune into Monday's episode. I actually
00:01:37.760 think it's the perfect episode going into Election Day on Tuesday, just trying to get our perspective
00:01:43.940 right and to realize that our citizenship is in heaven. Our kingdom is not of this world,
00:01:50.000 but we have work to do until we get there. So I'm going to read you a passage. And this is where
00:01:57.440 Christians, as we are looking out our window and we're seeing the chaos that is raging in the streets,
00:02:01.880 as we're seeing people that are torn apart by resentment and anger and selfishness and division,
00:02:09.240 as we see a world that is so confused and lost and desperate and lonely and anxious. This is where
00:02:17.440 we get our serenity. This is where we get our solace, our peace, our assurance, our confidence.
00:02:22.880 And it's from this passage, Matthew 10, 26 through 33. Jesus says this,
00:02:27.420 And we say this line on this podcast all the time. A lot of you have said, I know this line because of
00:02:54.500 relatable. Jesus says, And not one of them, not one of these sparrows will fall to the ground apart
00:03:00.580 from your father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore. You are of
00:03:06.780 more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge
00:03:13.140 before my father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father
00:03:19.360 who is in heaven. So that is our calling. That is our purpose. That is our aim. No matter what goes
00:03:24.720 on in the world, no matter who is elected, no matter who is in power, our goal is to proclaim
00:03:29.740 the truth of Christ from the rooftops, to be unashamedly representative of him, representative
00:03:36.280 of the gospel, realizing that we have a good father who takes care of us, that has numbered all the
00:03:42.200 hairs on our head, who knows every single part about us, who loves us and sent his son to die for us so
00:03:48.000 we could be friends with him and spend forever with him. And until then, our goal is to glorify
00:03:53.720 him. Our goal is to share the good news about him. And our goal is to glorify him in everything
00:03:59.640 that we do because he takes care of us. So as we get into everything that's going on in
00:04:05.560 Philadelphia, everything that's going on in the world right now, and as we take an assessment of
00:04:10.800 the things that are going on, I don't think it's good for us to just put our heads in the sand and to
00:04:13.980 pretend like the chaos isn't happening outside our door. I think we have to very honestly look
00:04:19.740 at what's going on and what our reaction should be according to God's word. But we cannot let this
00:04:25.880 take our joy. We can't let this take our peace and take our assurance. Even as we work to be
00:04:31.320 knowledgeable and be aware of things that are going on, we also have to have a perspective that is
00:04:36.760 eternal and that is of heaven and not of the anxieties of the world that will weigh us down.
00:04:45.020 So all of that said, let us take a look at some of the things that are going on in Philadelphia and
00:04:50.280 the political practical implications of this. So you guys know since May, we have seen looting,
00:04:57.700 we have seen rioting, we have seen anarchy, we have seen the destruction of property,
00:05:02.100 we have seen violence, we have seen murder come from left-wing anarchists, namely Black Lives Matter
00:05:08.320 activists and people who go by Antifa, an anti-fascist. That's actually a misnomer. They're
00:05:16.080 very fascist in nature. But these organizations and activists from these organizations are creating
00:05:25.120 chaos in major cities. All of them, by the way, are led by Democrats and are characterized by
00:05:31.840 democratic policies in order to, they say, create an uprising in the name of racial justice. And
00:05:42.060 that's what's happening right now in Philadelphia because a Black man by the name of Walter Wallace
00:05:48.940 Jr. was shot and killed by the police. I will include a link of the video of the incident in the description
00:05:56.560 of this podcast. I won't play it right now just in case there are some trigger issues there or you're
00:06:03.340 listening with people that don't want to see or hear that. But if you want to go watch it,
00:06:09.680 I will include the YouTube link to the video to show what actually happened. I'll describe it to
00:06:15.880 you in the video. You hear officers and you see the officers holding their guns and they are saying,
00:06:21.420 drop the knife, drop the knife. And you see Wallace holding a knife. And instead of dropping the knife
00:06:27.340 as they order him multiple times, he comes towards the police. There are lots of people around as well
00:06:33.460 who are kind of screaming, obviously frantic. There are reports that Wallace was mentally ill,
00:06:40.700 that he had bipolar disorder. Maybe this was an episode. We just don't know. But the police,
00:06:46.140 when he started charging them with the knife, shot him. And they were shots that were ultimately
00:06:51.980 fatal. Just a little bit about Walter Wallace. He was 27 years old and a father of nine children.
00:07:00.200 Some people are going to say, look, this is just another. While some people are going to say that
00:07:05.700 this is a symptom of systemic racism, that this only happens to Black Americans. That's obviously not
00:07:12.220 true. And we will talk about the data in a little bit. But there are also people that are saying that,
00:07:17.400 look, this guy was mentally ill. This is why we need major reform. This is why we need different
00:07:23.080 people to meet these scenarios. We need social workers or mental health counselors responding to
00:07:28.800 these situations and not armed police. They would say, you know, he could have been having an episode.
00:07:35.220 He needed a psychologist. He needed something like that. I personally don't think that that is
00:07:41.960 that is a good answer when someone is perpetuating violence and when they are armed. I think the
00:07:50.120 better answer is to help these people like Wallace, who apparently are very seriously mentally ill
00:07:57.080 before they get into this situation. Because once you have a grown man who is armed, mental illness or
00:08:02.760 not, that is posing a threat to people in order to protect the people around them, to prevent people
00:08:09.580 from getting killed, you're going to have to send in armed authorities. Now, I am always for the
00:08:15.480 preservation of life. I wish that he was not dead. He is an image bearer of God. I wish that he could have
00:08:21.920 served his time for whatever crime was being committed. He is obviously was, while he was alive, obviously
00:08:28.060 redeemable, just like the rest of us. If, you know, he was not saved, he was dead in his sin apart from
00:08:34.220 Christ. And we should desire that everyone be saved. My desire is always restoration for people to turn
00:08:40.220 around their lives. My desire is not for death. And that is certainly true in this case. Do I wish that
00:08:46.860 this could have had a different outcome? Do I wish that this wouldn't have gone that way? Of course,
00:08:52.120 that is my desire. I wish that in every situation there was preservation of life, but that is not
00:08:58.580 always possible. Tragically, that's just not the reality typically of these kinds of confrontations
00:09:04.680 that in order to protect the lives of the people around the suspect, the armed person, very often
00:09:11.220 force has to be used. Depending on the threat, fatal force. In this situation, there was a seemingly
00:09:18.220 manic man running around and charging with a knife. They asked him in the video to put it down multiple
00:09:24.680 times. We don't know how long they had been trying to de-escalate before the video started,
00:09:30.240 before it started being recorded, or what they had been trying to do before this video was filmed.
00:09:36.220 All we know from the video is that they were yelling at him to drop the knife. And instead,
00:09:41.400 he came at them and they shot him. And not only that, they probably knew this person's record before
00:09:47.040 they actually arrived, which could be why they were especially cautious and why they were more apt
00:09:53.540 to take the actions that they did in order to protect themselves and the people around them.
00:09:59.960 The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Wallace had been in and out of court for nearly a decade
00:10:04.980 with convictions for crimes, including resisting arrest and robbery. NBC reported that he had been
00:10:11.560 arrested in March after he allegedly threatened one of his child's mothers over the phone saying,
00:10:18.640 I'll shoot you and that house up. He was actually awaiting trial for that threat. The New York
00:10:25.120 Post says this, quote, in 2019, he was charged with resisting arrest by kicking the windows and door
00:10:30.840 panels of a police patrol car. In 2016, during a robbery, he allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck
00:10:38.180 and held what she believed to be a gun to her head. NBC said, citing court records,
00:10:43.780 he was sentenced to 11 to 23 months behind bars. His mother had a protective order against him in
00:10:50.420 2013, which she allegedly violated when he, quote, threw water in her face and punched her in the
00:10:56.640 face and threatened to return and shoot her, the report said, again, citing court records. That same
00:11:02.700 year, he pleaded guilty to assault and resisting arrest after punching a police officer in the face.
00:11:07.960 That same year, a judge also ordered a psychiatric evaluation along with mental health treatment,
00:11:12.740 the reports said. So mentally ill or not, this was an individual who probably should not have been
00:11:20.360 well, definitely should not have been on the street. He probably should not have had any access at this
00:11:26.940 point to women and children, specifically the people he had threatened. His mother apparently was
00:11:31.620 there. He had already assaulted and threatened his mother, threatened to kill her. He has multiple
00:11:36.140 alleged victims and clearly posed a threat to the people around him. And if you want to talk about
00:11:40.820 problems with our justice system, this is one of those problems. We just don't have great ways,
00:11:46.900 it seems, to compassionately and effectively help people with mental illness, especially in poor
00:11:53.040 communities who can't just afford to go out and, you know, pay a psychologist $700 an hour to treat
00:11:59.500 them. Our justice system, very often it seems, lets people back into society despite them being a danger
00:12:07.560 to themselves, being a danger to their victims and other potential victims. There was another terrible
00:12:13.240 story of this just to emphasize this point coming out of Norman, Oklahoma. A young pregnant woman was
00:12:18.500 beaten almost to death by her boyfriend who reportedly wanted to kill her baby. And the reason he was able
00:12:24.240 to beat her the second time is because he made bail after his first arrest because the judge,
00:12:29.500 Judge Scott Brockman, only issued a $1,500 bail while the prosecution recommended a $30,000 bail. Well,
00:12:38.080 this judge said that he doesn't believe in holding people on bail before being convicted. And so he made
00:12:43.540 the bail very small. He was this guy, this alleged abuser was able to easily post bail on October 17th.
00:12:53.500 That boyfriend beat the girlfriend again, almost to death, put her in the hospital. Now, thankfully,
00:13:00.140 he is in jail being held on a $250,000 bail. And apparently the baby and the mom are doing okay,
00:13:07.640 but that never had, that never had to happen because he was able to post bond because it was only a $1,500
00:13:15.080 bail because this apparently social justice judge doesn't believe in high bail amounts before someone is
00:13:22.640 convicted. This person was able to be let out of jail and re-abuse his victim and his baby.
00:13:30.400 There's this idea that's popular in more social justice circles that bail is immoral. It shouldn't
00:13:36.040 be issued at all. They created bail reform in New York that drastically reduced the kinds of cases where
00:13:41.680 judges were allowed to set bail. They had to amend it just a few months later to expand the kinds of
00:13:48.540 cases where judges could issue cash bail because the reforms coincided with huge spikes in violent
00:13:55.500 crime. So there may very well, actually, I think there are reforms that need to be had with the
00:14:01.620 bail system. I think it disproportionately and unfairly in some cases affects poor suspects for sure.
00:14:10.380 But as with all policy, especially social justice policy that is always made to sound compassionate,
00:14:18.100 you have to weigh the other side of the equation. So sure, it might decrease the incarcerated population.
00:14:24.420 That's what bail reform aims to do. But there is very likely a human cost to that reduction in jail
00:14:31.160 population, a cost to the safety and security of previous and potential victims.
00:14:45.620 I say all this to say that the reaction to situations like this with Walter Wallace is that,
00:14:51.740 well, the police just need to be neutered. They need to be weakened. We need to do less. The justice
00:14:56.180 system needs to be less harsh and smaller. Police need to be weaker. It all needs to be replaced by
00:15:01.780 social workers and social justice activists. And again, I'm not saying that there aren't in many
00:15:07.120 cases areas where the justice system needs to be made better. It needs to be reformed in that
00:15:13.460 police, the police system could be reformed in some ways and that there could be better training.
00:15:20.060 We've talked about the situations in which I believe the police were totally unjustified
00:15:25.060 and using the force that they did with suspects. That certainly happens. But when we're talking
00:15:30.500 about criminal justice in general, people almost always focus on the accused and the convicted
00:15:37.500 getting treated too harshly and not about the cost to changing that, not about their accusers and the
00:15:44.440 victims of their crimes. We hardly ever hear from criminal justice advocates about the failures of
00:15:50.760 the justice system when they set bail too low or when they let people out too early or when the
00:15:56.400 perpetrators are let off too easily. That happens regularly, by the way. And that's a problem,
00:16:02.760 again, that has a human cost to it. And in the case of Walter Wallace, like I said, he had a record
00:16:08.780 that told us that he was very likely a violent threat to his mother, to the women in his life, to
00:16:15.560 police officers and potentially his children. We should not be putting people, especially those,
00:16:20.760 who struggle with mental illness that leads to violence in jail for 20 months for violent crime
00:16:26.700 than letting them out without any help, without any kind of real accountability and without any
00:16:32.000 kind of checkup. Like in Walter Wallace, I think the judge actually did instruct or say that he needed
00:16:41.500 some kind of mental illness treatment. Was there ever any accountability for that? Was there ever any
00:16:47.340 checking in on him to make sure that he was not a threat to himself or the people around him? It's
00:16:52.260 just not fair for us to put people like that in jail for a few months and then let them out without
00:16:57.760 any kind of real help or safeguards around them. So the justice problems for Wallace predated him
00:17:03.980 getting shot. That's the real problem here, in my opinion. Knowing what we know now, the police
00:17:09.520 officers were justified in this particular situation from what we know in using force, not just for
00:17:15.520 their sake, but for the sake of everyone around them who were at risk of getting stabbed by a man
00:17:21.000 running in circles with a knife. This is very similar to the story of Jacob Blake. Again, someone
00:17:27.220 who I am very glad was not actually killed. I am glad that he is still alive. But he had already been
00:17:34.740 accused of sexually assaulting and threatening the mother of his children. And the reason why that is
00:17:39.780 relevant is because he was at her house at this time. And she called the police and said,
00:17:44.280 hey, this guy isn't supposed to be here. He's already sexually assaulted me. He's already
00:17:48.300 threatened me. You know, she was probably scared for her life and for her children's life.
00:17:53.020 Called 911, said, can the police please come and take care of this? And Blake came at the police with
00:17:59.540 a knife and reached into his car. And the police didn't know what he was reaching for. Apparently,
00:18:04.340 there was a fear that not just that he would be violent, but also that he would harm or kidnap
00:18:09.620 the children. And so in that particular case, from what we know, yes, the police were justified
00:18:14.680 in taking the steps that they did to protect all of the people around them in that scenario.
00:18:21.480 And just a reminder, this is the guy that Kamala Harris told, went to him, visited him and said that
00:18:28.620 he is, is she is, is proud of him. Regardless of how you feel about the police shooting him,
00:18:36.280 that is ridiculous. I mean, apparently, and I'm about to get graphic, but apparently,
00:18:40.980 according to accusations, he had just digitally raped the mother of his children while she was
00:18:46.200 sleeping in the bed with one of her sons at her house and accused her of all these things that
00:18:51.240 apparently, well, it doesn't even matter whether they were true or not. He had sexually assaulted her
00:18:55.800 in front of their children. There is no mind paid to her at all. Like there's no attention or
00:19:01.560 sympathy given at all to her in this situation. It just doesn't fit the narrative.
00:19:05.620 It doesn't matter that Jacob Blake was armed. It doesn't matter that police told him to put the
00:19:09.920 knife down. It doesn't matter he was apparently harassing the girlfriend he had already allegedly
00:19:13.920 assaulted. It doesn't matter that the children and the people around him were at risk.
00:19:18.160 Kenosha, Wisconsin burned to the ground. Thanks to Antifa and Black Lives Matter, people's lives
00:19:24.440 and livelihoods who were not involved in the situation at all were ruined. That's the opposite of
00:19:30.520 justice, by the way. Punishing innocent people for punishing innocent people because you want to
00:19:38.220 for doing nothing wrong. That is the definition of injustice. Here's some of the footage of what is
00:19:45.040 going on right now in Philadelphia.
00:19:48.500 No peace! No justice! No peace! No peace! No justice! No peace! Take it to the streets of
00:19:54.740 So as you can tell, it's chaos. It's violence. It's a mob. Again, this is not justice. For the millionth time,
00:20:13.480 and I know when all of this was happening in Minneapolis, people got so mad at the people who
00:20:19.600 were saying this, but these people are not looting because they're righteously angry. I guarantee that
00:20:26.580 a lot of these people do not know Walter Wallace's name. It is most likely not because they are starving.
00:20:33.940 We see them. These are not homeless people. These are not destitute people. They see an opportunity
00:20:38.620 to do wrong, to steal, and so they are. I mean, we as Christians know how human depravity works. This
00:20:44.160 is in all of our hearts. We've read the book of Proverbs. This is what wickedness is and does. This
00:20:49.440 is the outworking of evil. That doesn't mean that many of them haven't had hard lives and that we
00:20:53.920 can't have compassion for them. That doesn't mean that they're not valuable people made in the image
00:20:58.900 of God with the potential for redemption. Of course they are. They're not worse than the rest of us
00:21:03.060 are when we were without Christ, but we don't have to pretend that this isn't wickedness just
00:21:09.460 because the social justice narrative and critical race theory tells us that we can't call it wickedness
00:21:13.760 because of the color of their skin. That is, like I said, a critical race theory view that says that
00:21:18.860 non-white people are oppressed and white people are oppressors no matter what their life experiences
00:21:24.720 are or what their actual actions are, and therefore non-white people are not responsible for their
00:21:30.720 behavior, but white people, according to critical race theory, are responsible for not just our
00:21:34.920 behavior, but also the reactions to our behavior, whether they are actually racist or not, and the
00:21:41.560 behavior of all of our ancestors. That's madness. That is not God's standard of right and wrong. That's
00:21:47.200 not God's standard of judgment and righteousness. God's judgment will not and does not work that way.
00:21:53.840 When God orders us not to steal in the Ten Commandments or even to want our neighbor's things,
00:21:58.440 he means that. When Ephesians 4 orders us not to steal, God means that. When John 10.10 tells us
00:22:05.120 that Satan steals, kills, and destroys, and that the world without Christ is ruled and influenced by
00:22:09.940 Satan, God means that. The second part of that is what he says in Ephesians 2. God's righteous
00:22:16.540 judgment will not categorize us as white versus black or oppressed versus oppressor, but rather
00:22:22.680 as alive in Christ or dead in sin. And when we refuse to call out wickedness in one group because
00:22:29.720 it's politically incorrect or unpopular and critical race theory tells us that we can't,
00:22:34.680 we fail to love those people by refusing to call them to repentance. So right now, the people who are
00:22:42.400 refusing to say that looting and writing is bad because somehow that is condoning police brutality,
00:22:49.740 when that's not at all true. By the way, the Bible also says not to murder. So any situation in
00:22:55.260 which the police or anyone is not justified in using fatal force, that is murder and obviously
00:23:01.680 is atrocious to God and something that we should stand up against. But that was not the case in this
00:23:09.780 scenario. And that does not also mean that we can't say that looting and rioting and destruction of
00:23:14.880 property and theft are also wrong and soul crushing and life crushing. People who buy into that, who
00:23:23.960 won't criticize what's going on in some of these cities, they are following the spirit of this world,
00:23:29.100 which steals, kills, and destroys. But Christ offers abundant life. So when we excuse the stealing,
00:23:35.940 the killing, the destroying, when we patronize the people doing these things as if they don't have
00:23:40.200 agency, as if they don't have the ability to make choices, we rob them of the power of the gospel,
00:23:46.980 which is freedom from sin, which is not just destroying these store owners, the employees of
00:23:53.600 these stores, the people who rely on the economy of the city to live, but the sin is also destroying
00:24:00.320 the sinners themselves. It is hateful. It is the pinnacle of hate to say that this is okay for them
00:24:08.060 when it is not. That's one thing I keep saying about critical race theory and social justice
00:24:13.920 seeping into the church. Pastors who have adopted this stuff are too scared to talk to their non-white
00:24:20.140 congregants about sin and repentance. They speak to them only as victims of oppression rather than as
00:24:28.080 victims of their own sin who can be made victorious in Christ. And that has eternal implications.
00:24:34.800 This is what happens when the church takes on the world's standards of right and wrong,
00:24:39.520 of justice and injustice. We know from the book that NPR covered, we talked about it a few weeks
00:24:45.760 ago on this podcast, called In Defense of Looting, that this is even more sinister and organized than
00:24:52.740 a bunch of people stealing stuff spontaneously. This is being orchestrated by left-wing anarchist groups
00:24:59.720 who believe that looting is a way to protest against the evils of capitalism. The goal is to
00:25:08.320 slow economic recovery after the lockdowns as a way to create a foundation for a new socialistic
00:25:14.000 order. Now, the people that are going out there and looting and stealing flat screen TVs and are
00:25:19.780 emptying out a dollar store, they don't realize that, but they are being used and exploited by these
00:25:25.920 groups in order to accomplish that goal. The author of the book, In Defense of Looting, said this in
00:25:32.300 April. In April. So before George Floyd happened, before the riots and looting broke out in Minneapolis at
00:25:38.540 the end of May, beginning of June. The author said this, quote, a new energy of resistance is building across
00:25:44.780 the country. And he, this person, I actually don't know what the author's name is, but this author
00:25:51.400 said that looting is coming, that the organization of protests against capitalism via looting is
00:26:02.120 coming. Said that in April. Wrote this book before that. This is, much of this chaos is orchestrated.
00:26:08.580 It is organized. It is not just spontaneous anger. Now, the people who are organizing it are using
00:26:14.960 probably some of the spontaneous anger and desperation and emotions of some of these young
00:26:20.660 people to advance their goals. But behind the scenes, this is not just righteous, spontaneous
00:26:26.100 anger and a push for racial justice. Again, that's not to say that there aren't people who are
00:26:31.940 legitimately angry about racism or that there aren't peaceful protesters because there are many of them
00:26:38.680 or that there aren't a lot of sincere people who support Black Lives Matter and think racism in the
00:26:44.560 police force is systemic. There are a lot of sincere, good, compassionate people who do and
00:26:50.600 believe those things. Now, I think they're wrong to latch themselves to those movements. But of
00:26:55.440 course, not all of the people who are on that side are, you know, far left-wing anarcho-communists.
00:27:02.600 So it's important to make that distinction. But my assertion is that their sincerity and genuine
00:27:08.240 empathy is being manipulated into buying into a movement that is led by bad people with bad goals
00:27:15.260 and is already reaping bad results and the very communities and lives that these very empathetic
00:27:22.140 people claim to want to help. And this is what Black Lives Matter is about. They are a self-proclaimed
00:27:28.240 Marxist, that means communist organization, self-proclaimed. I'm not just applying that to them.
00:27:34.920 They have said it themselves. They are a Marxist organization that does not care about Black Lives in
00:27:40.300 general. They do not care about Sequoia Turner, the eight-year-old killed by rioters in Atlanta a
00:27:46.220 couple months ago. They do not care about Antonio Mays, the Black 16-year-old killed by rioters in
00:27:51.580 Seattle a few months ago. They do not care about David Dorn, the Black former police chief killed
00:27:56.580 by rioters in St. Louis. When they say, say their names, they're not talking about these people.
00:28:02.100 They do not care about Black people killed by other Black people, which is 93% of all Black homicides,
00:28:08.360 by the way. They are not concerned with gang violence or the babies and toddlers killed in
00:28:13.760 drive-by shootings every week in Compton, Chicago, New York. They do not care about the hundreds of
00:28:20.180 thousands of Black babies being killed in the womb every year because Planned Parenthood specifically
00:28:25.980 targets these communities and sets up shop in these communities. They do not care that abortion is
00:28:32.480 disproportionate among Black women. They do not care about that. They are not concerned with Black lives in
00:28:37.820 general. They only care about Black lives taken in a particular way that will justify cries of racism
00:28:45.000 that they can then use to exploit the emotions and desperation of young Black people to get them to
00:28:50.640 loot and burn and kill. They in Antifa want the chaos. They think that it is a revolution. And this is
00:28:58.460 what Marxism is and has always been. It is violent. It is deadly. It is never about justice. It is about
00:29:05.860 retribution. We have talked about all of this stuff so many times. Read about the Soviet Revolution,
00:29:12.100 the Zimbabwean Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, even much of the French
00:29:17.200 Revolution, all waged in the name of liberation and love only to end in tyranny and oppression.
00:29:24.160 History is our guide here, guys. We are not waiting in the darkness wondering if there's ever been a
00:29:29.080 revolution like this and how it ended. We know how it ends. It doesn't end well. We don't have to
00:29:33.360 wonder. This stuff isn't new. This is also the product of our school system not teaching history.
00:29:39.740 Leftism is an ideology that cannot build. It cannot grow. It cannot unite. It's just not in its nature.
00:29:48.580 Its nature is deconstruction. Deconstruction of the nuclear family, of gender, of all social norms,
00:29:56.100 of capitalism. Black Lives Matter has openly put themselves against the nuclear family,
00:30:01.700 against what they call gender stereotypes, against capitalism. They're open about these things.
00:30:07.060 That is why Black Lives Matter used to say on their site, they took it down after several months,
00:30:11.860 but we've got the receipts, that they want to disrupt the nuclear family. Why they won't mention
00:30:16.760 fathers, but they'll mention parents and families and children on their website. They want to dismantle
00:30:23.040 gender. They want to destroy capitalism. They want to do away with the Western rule of law.
00:30:26.940 That is what Ibram X. Kendi and all the critical race theorists are about. It never ends well. We've
00:30:33.340 seen it before. It never ends well. There's never been a functioning society in the history of the
00:30:38.140 world that has existed without the basic categories of male and female. There has never been a better
00:30:42.540 society than the ones that have been built on the Western rule of law, due process, free speech,
00:30:47.420 freedom of religion, which draws on biblical principles like property rights. The nuclear family is the
00:30:55.240 bedrock of all thriving nations and societies. And we are seeing people seek to dismantle each of them
00:31:02.600 in the name of liberation. It will make things worse. We're seeing that right now in Minneapolis,
00:31:08.780 in Kenosha, in Philadelphia. But if we are discerning as Christians and we abandon all preconceived
00:31:17.260 notions and political narratives, we can look at this particular situation and simply say that this man,
00:31:24.040 with tragically, a history of serious violence, possibly, potentially from what we know, mental
00:31:31.440 illness as well, charged up police officers with a knife after they told him to put it down multiple
00:31:36.560 times. And because of that, they used fatal force. We don't have evidence as of right now that this is
00:31:42.320 a story of racism. We don't know that at all. That doesn't mean that there are no racist cops who are
00:31:47.840 never motivated by racism, but we don't know that here. And in the previous situations where we have had
00:31:53.840 these discussions, we also don't know that in those scenarios either. It's not just for us to
00:31:59.800 ascribe racism to a situation simply because it involves a white person and a black person. That's
00:32:06.860 not truthful. That's not discerning. That's not wise. As we have talked about many times, just getting
00:32:12.660 into the data, and I know this is the part that people have the biggest issue with, but these are
00:32:16.720 just the numbers. There are 50 to 60 million interactions between the police and the populace
00:32:23.280 every year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Of those interactions in 2019, according
00:32:28.600 to the Washington Post database, 999 ended in a police officer fatally shooting a suspect. That is
00:32:36.580 0.002% of all police interactions with the public. If we say that there are about 60 million interactions
00:32:43.420 per year, 0.002%. That is very comforting that the vast majority of police interactions, the vast
00:32:51.720 majority of police interactions, 99.99, that end well. They end peacefully at least without someone
00:33:03.940 actually getting killed. Of the 999 fatal police shootings, 55 were unarmed, and that is technically
00:33:11.860 unarmed. So they could have been trying to assault the officer or someone else in some other way, but
00:33:16.700 they weren't actually armed. That is 0.009% of all police interactions. Of those, 14 were black, 25 were
00:33:27.440 white. So 14 unarmed black people killed by the police last year. And again, that is technically
00:33:33.520 unarmed. There were 2,925 black victims of homicide in 2018, according to FBI data, and 90% of them were
00:33:43.400 killed by black perpetrators. And we don't know any of the names of those victims. Most people also
00:33:49.480 don't know the names, Daniel Shaver, Justine Damon, Tony Tempa, Cameron Eli, Maggie Brooks, I could go on
00:33:55.260 and on because they're white. The media don't cover those in the same way and with the same vigor that
00:34:01.660 they cover the other shootings. The assertion, though, is that disproportionately black people
00:34:08.100 are shot by the police compared to white people, that black people only make up 12 to 13% of the
00:34:14.560 population, yet make up a higher percentage of police shootings. And that is an indication we hear
00:34:19.440 of systemic racism. Jason Riley, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, he also happens to be
00:34:25.260 black. He has wrote many books about this situation. He argues that is because, unfortunately,
00:34:30.300 tragically, and you can say that there are a million different reasons for this, these inner city
00:34:35.020 communities end up taking the lion's share of the crime. And therefore, they take the lion's share of
00:34:43.400 the police attention. That is not saying that they deserve to be shot by the police or that we should just
00:34:48.820 look away and we should ignore it, especially when it's unjustified. But you have to control
00:34:53.780 for that factor when you're trying to figure out whether or not racism and bias is involved here.
00:35:04.040 They make up, black Americans make up about 12 to 13% of the population, but unfortunately account for
00:35:10.440 about 40% of the homicides. So they are disproportionately victims of violent crimes, which means that they are
00:35:17.440 going to have a disproportionate number of interactions with the police every year. We just have to factor
00:35:23.000 that in when we are trying to figure out whether or not the police are actually systemically racist and
00:35:28.580 whether or not they are killing people because of their race. Again, I'm not using that statistic
00:35:34.220 to say that there is anything inherent about these communities or that the police are always justified in
00:35:41.300 using the force that they are. I'm just saying this is a factor that you have to factor in when you are
00:35:47.280 figuring out whether or not the police are shooting people because of the color of their skin. These
00:35:53.100 numbers, these facts actually matter. But I understand if people bring these facts up, you are automatically
00:36:00.140 called a racist, not for any good reason, but you just are. And if people talk about the ways that we could
00:36:07.720 definitely improve inner city communities, welfare reform, encouraging cohesive family units, school
00:36:13.200 choice, you're also called a racist. And so we're just stuck in this stupid, vicious cycle. Every time
00:36:19.280 one of these things happens, we're told that we have to repeat the talking points and that's it. We have
00:36:23.700 to go along with the narrative. We have to pretend that defunding the police and abolishing the prison
00:36:29.180 system, that these are the only solutions. We have to agree that the police in this country are
00:36:34.460 systemically racist. We have to read all the books that critical race theorists tell us to read.
00:36:40.740 Corporations, an entire political party, the news media, social media, kowtow to the narrative
00:36:46.700 that these far-left organizations are perpetuating. And it does nothing but stir up strife and division
00:36:54.420 and ignite racial tensions where they should not exist that eventually leads to the kind of violence and
00:37:00.560 destruction that we are seeing in places like Philadelphia. These organizations enable and
00:37:05.940 encourage the chaos. All of these cities experiencing the rioting are run by Democrats. It was reported in
00:37:12.380 Philadelphia that police were instructed to only disperse the looters, not to arrest them. That's not
00:37:17.960 justice. That is the government failing to fulfill their Romans 13 duty. That is hateful toward the people
00:37:24.900 affected by the rioting and the looting. But this is what the modern Democratic Party does. This is the left-wing
00:37:31.500 ideology that they are now motivated by. They're scared to do anything because they're scared of being seen as
00:37:37.500 racist. They're scared of the left-wing mob. So they'll let people's lives be ruined while they hide away in their
00:37:45.280 homes safe. It's sick. I just don't understand why you would vote for more of this. You keep seeing leftist
00:37:52.020 celebrities and influencers saying that they're voting Democrat for people of color. Democrats have
00:37:56.840 been running the cities with the largest concentrations of people of color for decades.
00:38:01.740 These cases of police brutality and rioting and looting and mob violence have all happened this
00:38:07.360 year in Democrat-controlled cities and mostly Democrat-controlled states. Democrats aren't going
00:38:12.600 to fix this. They can't fix this. They're already in power in these places. And if you criticize all the
00:38:18.120 chaos, somehow you are accused of lacking empathy. But the Christian, we have an obligation to master
00:38:26.940 using discernment, speaking truth, resisting deceit, especially popular deceit, and having love and
00:38:35.880 compassion for everyone involved. So you can seek and speak the truth and still say that Wallace was an
00:38:41.680 image bearer of God whose life mattered. You can and should still pray for his friends and family.
00:38:47.480 You can and should also care about the store owners whose livelihoods have been stripped from them
00:38:52.800 because of looting, not because of anything that they did. The people who are affected by mob violence.
00:39:00.660 We can have compassion and care about all of these groups and care about real injustice when it happens
00:39:07.320 without buying into the popular narratives. Christian, if your thinking and your mentality and
00:39:13.800 your definitions of justice and right and wrong are reiterated by the entirety of the secular world,
00:39:19.720 that is enough for you at least to take a step back and to wonder and to wonder if you're on the
00:39:24.140 right side here. We should not be informed by the world what justice is, what right and wrong is,
00:39:29.740 what human dignity and the sanctity of life looks like. And so if there's a narrative that is being
00:39:35.100 pushed down people's throats by every institution, large institution that exists, that's enough for the
00:39:40.620 to take a step back and say, is that right? Is that biblical? Is this going to lead to more peace
00:39:46.620 and justice and unity and equality and fairness? Something that we should all want? Is the mainstream
00:39:52.660 narrative on this right? Maybe in some cases it is, but it is incumbent upon us to know the details,
00:40:00.000 to know the truth, to know the facts, to not be scared of that and to not say, you know what? I'm not
00:40:04.800 even going to look at the facts. I'm not going to look at the statistics. I'm not even going to look at
00:40:08.280 what really happened. I'm just going to empathize with people's anger. That's not loving. Empathy
00:40:12.420 without truth is hate, not love, not love. We have to be able to pair both compassion and truth
00:40:20.300 together or else we are either entirely fluffy and we're enabling bad and destructive and sinful
00:40:26.440 and ultimately soul crushing behavior. But if we don't have love, then we are just, we're yelling
00:40:34.620 into the wind and we're not going to have any effect or any witness to the world, but it's possible
00:40:38.660 and necessary for us to have both. Unfortunately, I've talked to a lot of Christian women over the
00:40:45.980 past couple of weeks who identify as, you know, social justice, left-leaning. And when I try to
00:40:51.800 engage with them on these issues, you know, they'll end up responding to one of my stories and say,
00:40:56.100 you're so polarizing, you're so divisive, you're wrong about this. This is a mischaracterization.
00:41:00.760 This is wrong. I say, hey, can you please give me an example of what you're talking about? Can you
00:41:06.980 give me an example of how I've been hateful, not just disagreeing with an ideology or disagreeing
00:41:13.220 with people's ideas, but can you give me an example of the demonization or the polarizing? Now, I'm not
00:41:19.520 talking about a lot of people. I'm talking about like two people that I've had interactions with in
00:41:23.120 the past couple of weeks. And I say, can you give me an example? Or, you know, you say that I'm wrong.
00:41:27.640 Can you give me, can you talk about where I'm wrong and how I'm wrong? And the response is always the
00:41:33.300 same. Look, I'm not trying to make a case. Look, I'm not on trial here. Look, if you're interested
00:41:38.600 in that, you can just Google it. Look, I don't need to give you examples. And what I found is that
00:41:44.140 much of the pushback is emotional. And when you try to engage with truth, they accuse you of not
00:41:51.160 being loving. We can't be factless people, guys. We can't be truthless people. We can't just be
00:41:56.760 filled with these emotions and call ourselves loving. That's not loving at all. That's not an
00:42:01.060 effective witness. Like, have you read the gospels? Have you read how Jesus speaks? Have you read how
00:42:05.820 he talks? Have you read the letters? Have you read about who God is and how he speaks truth and how
00:42:10.820 important truth is? It's so important for us to be able to couple those two things. Speaking of love
00:42:17.400 and showing our love, there was an organization. I'm going to pull it up on Instagram right now.
00:42:24.720 There was an organization that is raising money for children who have been affected by the mob
00:42:32.580 violence in Philadelphia. So the Fridge on 52nd, they posted something that said this,
00:42:38.140 hey, community, this is an urgent call to action. The students over at Bryant Elementary School are in
00:42:42.940 need of supplies. Many of their homes have been broken into over the last few days because of
00:42:47.400 the rioting and the looting. They've experienced direct consequences because of their close proximity
00:42:51.700 to, now this group calls it the uprising, but I would say that they are riots. And so
00:42:58.560 some things that they need, they need non-perishable foods. They need school supplies,
00:43:02.300 winter coats, gloves and scarves, baby supplies, shoes and clothes. So we're talking about babies
00:43:07.440 that are now missing their supplies. We're talking about kids that don't have their winter coats
00:43:11.920 because they've been stolen by these looters and these rioters. So if you want to show love,
00:43:18.360 you can help the people that have been unjustly affected by this violence. And so talking about
00:43:26.000 speaking the truth in love, this is how we couple action. This is how we couple love with speaking
00:43:30.800 the truth. We show it and we speak it. Don't look like the rest of the world, guys. Don't let the
00:43:36.460 world evangelize to you about what justice looks like, what love looks like, what compassion and
00:43:40.620 empathy look like. It doesn't end well. It doesn't end well. You will get nowhere by kowtowing to the
00:43:46.580 secular social justice mob. Trust me on that. There will be more of all this talk on Monday with
00:43:52.420 Rod Dreher and you will leave feeling encouraged and you will feel leaving motivated as well,
00:44:00.660 especially as we go into the election. There's a lot of craziness coming up, guys. I know.
00:44:05.860 And there's a lot of chaos going on. You're scared. You're worried. You're anxious. I understand.
00:44:12.140 I've had butterflies in my stomach for the past week, just kind of anticipating the tensions and the
00:44:18.280 chaos that is going to happen no matter what Tuesday night holds for us. I think that there will
00:44:25.940 be unrest, unfortunately. And that worries me. I don't want that. I don't want that at all. And so
00:44:32.960 I understand all of your concerns. I really do. But I trust in the fact that God has never been
00:44:39.560 more sovereign or less sovereign than he is right now, that he is steadily on his throne
00:44:46.060 and that he doesn't change. Hebrews 13, 8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
00:44:52.560 His standards of righteousness don't change. He doesn't move with the culture. He doesn't change
00:44:57.040 with politics. He doesn't get less in charge or less authoritative, depending on who is in the
00:45:03.780 White House. Our calling, our purpose does not change because God does not change. So he is in
00:45:09.220 control. He's got it. He knows who is going to win the election. He knows what the next year holds. He
00:45:15.400 knew what this entire year was going to hold. And he is absolutely in charge. And when he is doing one
00:45:20.720 thing, he's doing a million things, many of which we cannot see. But he promises us that in the end,
00:45:26.780 he will claim victory. And until then, he is going to use us to bring glory to himself.
00:45:31.480 And so that purpose hasn't changed. Our job is to love him with all of our hearts, mind, soul,
00:45:37.140 and strength, to love our neighbor as ourselves. That means meeting their needs. That means caring for
00:45:42.260 them. That means loving them. That means sharing the gospel with them. That also means speaking truth to
00:45:45.980 them. And not giving in to what the world says we must look like and sound like and be like.
00:45:53.440 Okay, that's all I have for today. I will see you back here on Monday.