Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 11, 2021


Ep 349 | Cutting Through the Chaos: What Really Happened?


Episode Stats

Length

55 minutes

Words per Minute

171.91386

Word Count

9,514

Sentence Count

527

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

14


Summary

Trump supporters were able to get into the U.S. Capitol and disrupt a speech by President Donald Trump. Some have claimed that this was a white supremacist act of white supremacist violence. Others have said that this is evidence of white privilege. What do we do in the midst of all of this chaos, especially in light of tech censorship?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a good and restful weekend.
00:00:07.320 Maybe you unplugged a little bit and haven't been following the very stressful news that
00:00:13.220 has been coming out in an hourly basis today. We are going to get into some of that. We're
00:00:18.100 going to analyze once again what happened last week with storming the Capitol. We're going to
00:00:22.940 talk about some of the narratives surrounding that. So we're going to talk about this claim
00:00:27.440 of this was a white supremacist insurrection or this was evidence of white privilege that these
00:00:34.720 people were actually able to effectively storm the Capitol and get inside the Capitol. We're also
00:00:39.900 going to talk about the potential of impeachment and what that actually means. And then we're going
00:00:43.960 to end the episode with something that I hope is encouraging, edifying, and equipping for you guys,
00:00:49.300 which is trying to answer the question in light of scripture, what do we do in the midst of all of
00:00:53.520 this chaos, especially in light also of the tech censorship that has been going on? That's a
00:00:58.580 subject that we're going to tackle in depth tomorrow. It's a huge subject and it would, again,
00:01:04.460 stretch this episode to an hour or an hour and a half. So we'll talk about tech censorship tomorrow,
00:01:09.060 but at the end of the episode, we'll try to answer this question. All right, how am I supposed to look
00:01:14.180 at this? And what are my action items in the perspective or through the perspective of God's
00:01:21.620 word? So that's what we are going to cover today. Okay, so you guys know last Tuesday, Trump supporters
00:01:36.860 held a rally together while Trump spoke for over an hour. And then they walked to the Capitol,
00:01:43.460 mostly peacefully. But then a couple hundred people actually broke into the Capitol. And here's what
00:01:49.760 happened right before they marched from the rally where Donald Trump was speaking and then moved over
00:01:59.480 to the Capitol. And we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give, the Democrats are
00:02:07.400 hopeless. They're never voting for anything. We're going to try and give our Republicans the weak ones
00:02:14.080 because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride
00:02:21.000 and boldness that they need to take back our country.
00:02:33.820 So Trump did play a part in this. I keep hearing that I am scapegoating Donald Trump, that I'm putting
00:02:38.760 too much on his shoulders, that it had nothing to do with Donald Trump. Look, I don't think this had
00:02:43.180 everything to do with Donald Trump. I don't think Donald Trump is the only person or the only thing at
00:02:49.800 play here, the only factor playing into this. But of course, he did have a part in it. And not just
00:02:54.520 what he said for that hour long speech, but what he has been saying for the past two months. As I've
00:02:59.080 said, I think it's important to expose voter fraud where we think it exists. I think the legal fights
00:03:04.440 are important. I support that. I don't think that we should just look away and pretend that irregularities
00:03:10.220 didn't happen or that states like Pennsylvania didn't follow election law. But the way that Trump has
00:03:16.460 been intentionally riling people up and actually in at least implicitly encouraging people not to vote
00:03:23.900 in Georgia, of course, had some kind of effect on people's attitudes. Now, I also think that it is a
00:03:30.780 very slippery slope to say that a president talking about voter fraud or holding a rally where he doesn't
00:03:37.900 explicitly call anyone to violence or anyone to a riot or chaos saying that that is inciting violence,
00:03:46.800 then that means a lot of different kind of speech could be considered inciting violence. And I don't
00:03:53.340 think that we want to lower the standard that much, even when it comes to the president of the United
00:03:59.520 States. Now, some people, when I talk about the riots, when I talk about the storming of the Capitol,
00:04:04.960 say, you know, there was no violence. I'm talking about Trump supporters. They say this this wasn't
00:04:09.920 violent at all. Capitol police just let these people in. That's a false narrative. Well, that's
00:04:15.600 not true. I'll show you this clip of a crowd of Trump supporters trying to trample the police in front
00:04:21.260 of the Capitol. I mean, that is terrifying. Can you imagine what law enforcement felt who were on the
00:04:40.640 front lines of that? There is actually another part of the clip that we didn't play there, but there is
00:04:45.460 a police officer yelling. You can tell out of desperation, feeling like he is going to be
00:04:50.980 trampled or feeling like he is going to have his head smashed in the door. That is terrifying.
00:04:57.300 And so for people to tell me that there was no violence, there was no coercion by these Trump
00:05:02.380 supporters, you're denying reality. We have video footage of it. It's the same way that when we saw
00:05:07.920 Antifa and BLM writing over the summer and you just kept hearing people say these are peaceful
00:05:13.100 protests. These are mostly peaceful protests. I mean, it became a meme that CNN reporter standing
00:05:18.500 in front of Kenosha flames all around him, parts of the town being burned to the ground and the
00:05:24.320 chyron on CNN saying mostly peaceful, but it was like mostly peaceful, but burning protests,
00:05:31.160 something ridiculous and just seemingly paradoxical like that. That's just as ridiculous for Trump
00:05:37.680 supporters who are in support of what happened at the Capitol to say there was no violence.
00:05:42.080 This is violence. And that's just one example of the violence. Now, I will say that there were
00:05:48.060 other clips of people just walking into the Capitol and Capitol police standing by and doing nothing.
00:05:55.920 I'll show you that clip.
00:05:56.760 Okay, so that's weird. I mean, maybe those police officers thought these people are peaceful. This is
00:06:14.740 the people's house. They can just come in here. There seems that there should have been better
00:06:19.660 discernment. There should have been better leadership there. The people who were walking in at that moment
00:06:24.740 didn't seem like they were violent or that they were trying to cause a riot. But maybe there should
00:06:30.720 have been some deductive reasoning going on with the Capitol police force in that particular case to
00:06:36.620 say, okay, you know what? This probably isn't the best idea. Tensions are really high. We know that
00:06:41.280 they're trying to verify the results of the election and that these people are probably unhappy because
00:06:45.620 they're Trump supporters and their guy lost. There probably could have been some reasoning there
00:06:50.840 for Capitol police in those cases to say, we're probably not going to let people in. And they did
00:06:56.420 in some cases, but also for the people saying, oh my gosh, Capitol police did nothing. Law enforcement
00:07:02.660 did nothing. They just let everyone in. Well, that's not true too, because you just saw that clip.
00:07:08.060 Here are people walking out of the Capitol after everything happened and they were basically kicked out
00:07:13.780 by law enforcement saying, uh, next time this is not going to be peaceful.
00:07:28.240 All right. Uh, so we've seen a few clips now where the people who are trying to infiltrate the Capitol,
00:07:36.540 people who are trying to get inside, uh, not only we're not peaceful, but saying that next time
00:07:41.140 they're even going to be less peaceful. And you can see where this is coming from. Like if you truly
00:07:45.560 believe the entire election has been stolen from you and that you are completely disenfranchised and
00:07:51.700 that no one is, is listening to you. If you've been told that over and over again, and that Congress is,
00:07:58.040 is doing nothing on your behalf, then you might be, if you are of that, uh, proclivity anyway. Um,
00:08:06.220 if your anger is easily riled up anyway, you could see how that would quickly lead to people,
00:08:12.860 uh, acting, behaving and speaking in this way. The fact of the matter is, as we talked about last
00:08:18.760 week, if this hadn't have happened, if they hadn't stormed the Capitol, you would have actually been
00:08:23.120 able to hear the case laid out for election fraud from senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Now
00:08:29.860 people are saying that Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, that they actually caused this, what they're
00:08:34.580 calling an insurrection, that they're to blame for violence. I think that is completely ridiculous.
00:08:39.620 We're going to get into in just a minute, democratic lawmakers, whose rhetoric could be,
00:08:44.120 if you use the same standard said to have incited violence. And so it's not a fair standard. Simon
00:08:49.500 and Schuster saying, okay, we're no longer going to have a book deal, uh, with Josh Hawley. Sure.
00:08:54.380 They are free to do that as a company, but should they do that? In, in my opinion, no,
00:08:59.860 they were, uh, they were fulfilling their duty as the representatives of some people in their state
00:09:06.440 to use lawful, peaceful, rhetorical means to lay out their case of election fraud. Now you might not
00:09:14.000 agree with what they were going to say. As I've said on this podcast, I actually, uh, was partial
00:09:19.420 to Tom Cotton's argument and to Chip Roy's argument that says, you know what, that's not really our role
00:09:25.600 as representatives and senators to try to defy the will of the electors. Um, I'm partial to that argument.
00:09:32.580 I think they lay out a good case and I wasn't really on board with Hawley and Cruz. Nevertheless,
00:09:38.480 it is their right to do that. And to say that doing something lawfully speaking in a way that was meant
00:09:45.520 to convince fellow lawmakers that fraud actually occurred in the election in a way that could have
00:09:52.240 changed the outcome of the presidential election, uh, was completely in their rights and in no way
00:09:58.660 directly incited any kind of violence, either implicitly or explicitly. So I think holding them to that
00:10:05.000 standard again, sets a really scary precedent for people on both sides of the aisle. Now, some people are
00:10:12.180 saying that this was Antifa infiltrating, that this had nothing to do with Trump supporters, that actually
00:10:17.580 there were buses of Antifa and Black Lives Matter supporters that actually dressed up as MAGA
00:10:24.020 people. And they just wanted to make, uh, you know, Trump supporters look bad. Washington Times reported
00:10:30.820 that a software company found that two Antifa BLM supporters were among the crowd. But as I talked
00:10:37.880 about last week, I, I didn't really see the, uh, validity or the veracity of that story. There was no proof
00:10:45.040 provided of that. Um, and that software company actually told, uh, Buzzfeed that that's not true.
00:10:52.900 Uh, like I said last week, the idea that this was Antifa or BLM and not predominantly Trump supporters.
00:11:01.420 And the reason I say predominantly is because is there a possibility that Antifa or someone on the
00:11:07.520 left infiltrated and decided, okay, you know what? I just want to cause chaos. I want to go scorched earth
00:11:12.620 to, of course, there's a possibility. There are people on the far left and the far right who share
00:11:17.340 common cause and wanting to see the country destroyed, wanting to start over and to build,
00:11:23.080 you know, their vision of what they think is a good country. So of course it's possible that there
00:11:28.180 were left-wing people there, but from the videos that we see from the testimonies that we hear, uh,
00:11:34.360 from the support from Trump supporters of this storming of the Capitol that I see on the internet,
00:11:39.940 I see no indication that this was some big, uh, Antifa infiltration and insurrection. I just don't
00:11:49.140 see proof, uh, proof of that. And this is not Black Lives Matter because as you can see from the
00:11:55.080 videos, uh, this is mostly white people and they don't look like Antifa either. Also a huge number
00:12:00.740 of Trump supporters. Like I said, I have seen online defending this. You would think if this wasn't Trump
00:12:06.180 supporters at all, there wouldn't be Trump supporters online saying that this was fine. Um,
00:12:11.080 again, like I said last week, this is very similar to Joy Reid on MSNBC peddling the conspiracy theory
00:12:17.820 over the summer and last year that all of the violence and the arson that we saw, uh, that we
00:12:23.680 continue to see in places like Portland, Seattle, Kenosha, Minneapolis, et cetera, were all just right
00:12:29.180 wingers, uh, dressing up as Antifa and, uh, BLM. That is a conspiracy theory. Uh, anecdotes about,
00:12:37.880 uh, the large Antifa infiltration. Uh, I just don't think amount to anything real. I think that's
00:12:46.300 also a conspiracy theory. Um, this has invited some criticism from some interesting international
00:12:55.140 characters who are looking at the unrest of the United States and saying, wow, that's really bad.
00:13:01.380 They no longer have, uh, any moral standing to criticize the rest of the world and to, you know,
00:13:08.520 slap sanctions on countries who aren't doing what they want us to do. Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela,
00:13:14.360 the vicious socialist dictator that has precipitated the starvation of its people and has jailed and killed
00:13:24.060 political dissidents. Um, he tweeted on Sunday, I shared the video that an individual disguised as
00:13:29.960 a Buffalo recorded making comments against Venezuela made before he violently entered the
00:13:34.680 U S Capitol. This shows us the madness of racism, extremism, and supremacism. Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.
00:13:43.020 I don't want to hear from you. I do not care what you have to say. One of the most wicked
00:13:49.200 dictators. This is all of this is by the way, uh, cause it's not just him. It's also, uh,
00:13:55.620 it's also the leader of Iran. It's also the leader of Saudi Arabia. Uh, it's also Russian leadership.
00:14:01.480 It's also Chinese leadership. They're all saying the same thing. They're saying, wow, this is really
00:14:06.260 bad. America is really racist. It's really unstable. It's really extremist. And you see people on the
00:14:11.300 left saying, wow, even these dictators get it. Even these totalitarian monsters understand
00:14:18.280 how terrible Donald Trump and how terrible Trump supporters and how terrible America is.
00:14:22.760 Give me a break. Like this is the same anti-American propaganda that these regimes have been peddling
00:14:29.080 for decades. And for Russia, literally a century, this is just propaganda to them. They are using it
00:14:36.600 as a way to distract from the atrocities that they perpetuate that most Americans can't even imagine.
00:14:44.380 Uh, this is, this should be scoffed at whether you are in the left or the right, you should scoff
00:14:50.120 at these leaders. They are not worried about racism and extremism in America. They are not worried
00:14:56.420 about the dangers of Trump supporters or the dangers of Donald Trump. It is all a farce. It is propaganda
00:15:02.720 that has been perpetuated for decades against America, that communists, that leftist regimes
00:15:08.880 have been pushing about anti, uh, about, uh, they would call it capitalist imperialism, or they would
00:15:16.880 call it, uh, evil Americanism or American chauvinism. That is propaganda that has been repeated and
00:15:23.780 reiterated by people on the left in the United States that really doesn't have a founding in reality.
00:15:28.600 That's not to say that there isn't any fair criticism to be leveled against the United
00:15:33.180 States, especially right now, but for these people to think they have any moral standing whatsoever
00:15:39.740 after perpetuating the kinds of atrocities that has America has never perpetuated. Uh,
00:15:47.360 and I, and I mean that like the things that are happening in the countries that these leaders
00:15:52.260 criticizing the United States are leading, uh, has never happened in the United States,
00:15:57.480 even with the horrible injustice that injustices that have been perpetuated here. So it's just
00:16:02.200 hypocrisy. If you are on the left or the right, you should roll your eyes and you should say,
00:16:06.700 sorry, we're not listening to the leader of Zimbabwe, who is even more cruel than his predecessor,
00:16:14.340 Robert Mugabe, who again has dragged his country into poverty, who has allowed genocide, who jails dissidents,
00:16:22.600 who executes people who, uh, uh, not even who break the law, but just to speak out against him,
00:16:29.280 who incite mob violence constantly. Like you have no right as a leader of those countries to criticize
00:16:35.760 the United States. This is just a way for them to peddle propaganda. Please do not fall for it.
00:16:45.040 Don't fall for it. What is happening in the United States is shameful. It is really bad. Um,
00:16:51.400 it is embarrassing in so many ways it is unstable. And yes, of course, our enemies are going to look
00:16:57.220 in and are going to say, wow, that is, that's really shameful. And that's really bad. But people
00:17:03.380 who have never allowed freedom in their own countries do not, do not have, uh, do not have
00:17:10.980 the rights to look at the United States of America, which has been carrying the torch of liberty,
00:17:15.620 almost exclusively our entire existence and say that we are, uh, we're no longer, uh, morally able
00:17:25.740 to point fingers at them. It's just hypocrisy and we should all scoff at it. Uh, now there are
00:17:33.880 articles of impeachment being filed in the house. According to CNN, the U S house of representatives
00:17:39.520 has released its resolution to impeach president Donald Trump, charging him with incitement of
00:17:43.920 insurrection, an article for which the house is expected to vote on this week. So the question
00:17:49.820 is, is this going to happen? And if it does happen, is it going to help anything? What does it actually
00:17:55.160 accomplish since Joe Biden is about to be, uh, inaugurated? Well, Senate is not in session right
00:18:01.840 now. So for the Senate to vote on this, which is now, um, going to be, I mean, it's, it's 50,
00:18:08.280 50. And so it would actually depend if it falls along partisan lines, which it might not be there
00:18:14.580 probably some Republicans in the Senate who would vote to impeach Donald Trump. But if it did fall
00:18:19.800 along partisan lines, um, we would have to see how that would actually play, play out. Um, this would
00:18:26.540 happen if the Senate actually did vote on it, this would happen about 24 hours before Biden is
00:18:32.260 inaugurated. So you might be asking what would be the point of, uh, of impeaching Donald Trump.
00:18:38.280 He would be stripped of some presidential, uh, privileges, and he also wouldn't be able to run
00:18:43.740 again in 2024. And so, and also I think that they are trying to make the argument that this just,
00:18:51.520 you know, it pushes back against Donald Trump. It makes a statement against Donald Trump. It denounces
00:18:55.480 Donald Trump, which a lot of people in Congress think is necessary. Now, is it actually going to help
00:19:01.100 things? I don't, I don't think so. I don't think it's going to make too much of a difference either
00:19:06.440 way, except that it does stop him, like I said, from running in 2024, which, um, a lot of people
00:19:12.860 left and right might be, uh, might be happy about, but people are also saying this, you know,
00:19:18.180 is counterproductive. If your goal is to unify and heal, as Biden says it is, it is not going to
00:19:23.680 accomplish that. He is going to be out in just a couple of weeks. There's no point of impeachment. So
00:19:28.980 those are the two sides to that. And I also think that there is a slippery slope, uh, argument to be
00:19:35.100 made, like a true slippery slope, not just the fallacy, um, to be said that, okay, if what you're
00:19:40.680 saying, uh, Donald Trump, if, if what you're saying, um, is inciting violence, uh, that Donald Trump has
00:19:49.000 tweeted about election fraud for the past two months, that, uh, he held a rally saying, you know,
00:19:55.060 we're going to walk to the Capitol and we're going to, you know, basically tell them who's boss.
00:19:59.300 They stole this election from us. If that amounts to what they are saying is incitement of insurrection
00:20:06.060 and is impeachable, like you can probably see how slippery of a slope that is. He didn't explicitly
00:20:12.200 call for violence. Um, he, I guess you could say maybe he implicitly inspired violence, but then
00:20:20.220 the, the waters are really muddy. Like the line is really blurry. And so, uh, how do we judge that
00:20:28.020 kind of rhetoric going forward? So if, uh, any people on the left cause violence and they say it's
00:20:35.200 because it's something that Biden said, is that then impeachable? Like how do we actually determine
00:20:41.100 the correlation and causation between someone's words who didn't explicitly call for violence and
00:20:47.320 something that actually happened that is violent? I think that's very difficult. And I think for the
00:20:51.640 sake of free speech, we need to make sure that the definition of incitement of insurrection is very
00:20:56.620 narrow and very specific. And that is to protect presidents both on the left and the right, because
00:21:01.480 you could see both parties weaponizing this against politicians and presidents, um, that they just
00:21:08.960 don't like who say things that they disagree with. You can always try to make a correlation causation
00:21:14.600 argument between what someone says and then what someone else does, but it should be a very difficult
00:21:20.660 and a very specific and narrow, uh, case to make. And I'm going to talk about some of the hypocrisy
00:21:27.020 and that, that we are seeing from Democrats in just a second. We're going to answer the question.
00:21:32.360 Um, we're going to answer the question, was this white supremacy, was this white privilege
00:21:36.740 and compare, uh, the things that the Democrats have said about other riots and violence that have gone
00:21:41.480 on in the country for the past few months and then what they are saying right now. But first,
00:21:46.560 we're going to take a quick break. All right, let's talk about this claim of white supremacy
00:22:00.780 and, uh, white privilege surrounding this. There were several articles, cable news segments,
00:22:06.580 Instagram posts claiming the reason that these people were able to get into the Capitol is because
00:22:12.080 of white privilege. Uh, here is what Biden and Harris had to say about this. Biden tweeted,
00:22:17.620 no one can tell me that if it had been a group of black lives matter protesters yesterday,
00:22:21.760 that they wouldn't have been treated very differently than the mob that stormed the Capitol.
00:22:26.140 We all know that's true and it's unacceptable. That tweet had like 550,000 likes, by the way,
00:22:33.920 this is the same kind of rhetoric that we heard from, uh, Barack Obama. And, uh, people always said,
00:22:41.640 you know, Barack Obama was so unifying. He brought us together. He never used the kind of divisive
00:22:45.780 rhetoric, uh, that Donald Trump did. Donald Trump is a lot more obvious with his rhetoric and in
00:22:50.780 particular his divisive rhetoric, his tweets have played a part in that. But, um, Barack Obama was
00:22:56.960 very subtle with his division. He was very subtle with what I would call his race baiting
00:23:02.040 and trying to, uh, divide people, not just by race, but also by class and by political party.
00:23:09.420 He would say that he's bringing people together, but in every chance, every chance that he got,
00:23:15.060 he would slam the other side. He would condescend the other side as just being, you know,
00:23:19.300 gun grabbers and, and, and, and Bible clingers and things like that. So that's what we can expect
00:23:24.720 from Joe Biden saying that he is going to bring unity and healing and then trying to make racial
00:23:30.020 divisions like this, which is only going to disintegrate us further. Here's what Kamala
00:23:34.760 Harris said in a statement. We witnessed two systems of justice. When we saw one that led
00:23:39.200 extremists toward the United States Capitol and another that released tear gas on peaceful
00:23:43.620 protesters last summer. We know this is unacceptable. We know we should be better than this.
00:23:50.160 The thing is, none of this is true. None of this is actually true. It makes matters worse
00:23:55.400 because none of it is true. Remember Minneapolis, Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, there were arson riots,
00:24:02.200 assault, almost completely unchecked. We talked about it a lot on this podcast. There were a lot
00:24:08.200 of people arrested, but most were released immediately and very few were actually prosecuted.
00:24:13.700 There's a New York times article that was released in November. Why charges against protesters are being
00:24:19.440 dismissed by the thousands. Here's what the article says, quote, prosecutors called the scale of both the
00:24:24.920 mass arrests and mass dismissals within a few short months unrivaled, at least since the civil rights
00:24:30.800 protests of the early 1960s. With the police detaining hundreds of people in major cities,
00:24:35.500 the arrests this year ended up colliding with the limitations of the court system. In the aftermath,
00:24:41.780 prosecutors declined to pursue many of the cases because they concluded that the protesters were
00:24:46.340 exercising their basic civil rights. Cases involving free speech or free assembly rarely succeed in court,
00:24:52.260 according to prosecutors across the country. And the coronavirus pandemic also played a role in the
00:24:57.160 decision. And yet the article goes on to say most charges and almost 300 federal protest cases
00:25:04.280 involve arson or assaulting police officers, as do the state and municipal cases. And yet most of those
00:25:12.140 charges were dropped. Kamala Harris even tweeted this a few months ago when Minneapolis was burning.
00:25:18.340 If you're able to chip in now to the MN Freedom Fund to help post bail for those protesting on the
00:25:24.180 ground in Minnesota, peaceful protesters, unless there was some rare exception, which I would speak
00:25:30.720 out against, were not arrested in Minnesota or in these cities. Again, if that does happen,
00:25:37.160 I am against that because I will always fight for people's right to peacefully protest, whether or not
00:25:41.560 I believe in the premise of their protest. But the people, for the most part, who were getting
00:25:46.200 arrested and who were charged in these cases, who eventually, again, were not prosecuted, were people
00:25:51.900 who were setting fire to buildings. There was a car shop in Minneapolis that was set fire. A man was
00:25:57.900 inside and he was burned alive. He died because of that. And Kamala Harris, the now vice president
00:26:03.820 elect of the United States, was tweeting shamelessly about donating to the Freedom Fund that would help
00:26:11.540 post bail for these people who were setting these fires and ruining people's lives and livelihoods in
00:26:16.880 Minneapolis. Most people have not received any kind of punishment for burning federal buildings or
00:26:22.700 private businesses. We're talking billions of dollars in damage. Someone pushed back on me about
00:26:28.380 that. It's about two billion dollars in damage in Minneapolis alone that occurred in the riots over
00:26:33.960 the summer. I mean, not to mention the rest of the cities that endured this kind of stuff.
00:26:37.820 We're talking about people's businesses, their livelihoods ruined, people who need services in
00:26:43.180 these cities unable to access them. It is always the most vulnerable that are hurt by this kind of
00:26:48.220 stuff. According to The Guardian, at least 25 Americans were killed in connection with protests
00:26:53.120 and riots last year. All but one was killed by a fellow citizen. The only person who was killed by the
00:26:58.540 police and all of the riots and the protests that happened in several cities across the country last
00:27:04.180 year, most or not most, many of them violent, was a white guy who called himself 100% Antifa,
00:27:11.500 who shot a Trump supporter in cold blood in Portland. According to the Justice Department,
00:27:16.700 700 law enforcement officers sustained injuries. And let's not forget about David Dorn, the police
00:27:22.640 chief who was black, murdered by BLM looters in St. Louis. Antonio Mays, 16-year-old boy who was black,
00:27:28.560 shot and killed in SHOP, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, that the governor and the Seattle
00:27:36.780 government, the police, just allowed to exist with impunity until this poor young man was murdered.
00:27:43.260 Sequoia Turner, an eight-year-old girl who was black, murdered by Black Lives Matter writers after
00:27:48.200 Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed in Atlanta, a man who was armed, by the way, with a taser.
00:27:53.040 Here is her mom after she was murdered as they're trying to find the suspect.
00:28:23.040 She was shot in the back of her car in a parking lot. Like her parents didn't take her to this
00:28:36.240 riot. Her mom was driving. She was in the car trying to turn around as they were getting somewhere.
00:28:42.500 And Black Lives Matter writers who were rioting and demonstrating, protesting, if you want to use
00:28:49.440 more generous terms, because of Rayshard Brooks, again, an armed man that was shot and killed by the
00:28:56.240 police, reached into their car and shot this eight-year-old girl point blank and killed her.
00:29:03.800 This is not whataboutism. I'm not trying to say that this in any way minimizes or excuses what
00:29:10.220 happened at the Capitol. I think what happened at the Capitol was absolutely egregious and that the
00:29:14.420 people there should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I'm just trying to say
00:29:19.260 that let us not, because what happened at the Capitol is egregious, forget about what happened
00:29:24.600 in the lives that were lost over the past few months and the Democrats, including Kamala Harris
00:29:28.300 and Joe Biden, that did nothing about it, that said nothing about it specifically, never called
00:29:33.320 out this violence by name. Maybe some vague platitudes about, oh, we don't want violence. But I
00:29:38.760 always think specificity and naming names is important and Democrats fail to do that time and
00:29:45.000 begin. So who is on the line, is my question, for these lives that were lost? Whose rhetoric do we
00:29:51.020 blame for those lives being lost? Whose rhetoric do we blame for that violence? Who gets thrown off
00:29:56.660 Twitter for that? Is Black Lives Matter held accountable for that? Are they charged with inciting
00:30:02.860 violence? And what about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted this a few months ago, quote,
00:30:08.080 protests are supposed to make people feel uncomfortable? This is in the midst of people
00:30:11.880 being murdered by rioters. Oriana Presley, who said on MSNBC, there will be, quote, unrest in the
00:30:18.400 streets as long as there is unrest in our lives. These are after these people have been murdered by
00:30:23.640 rioters. What about all the MSNBC commentators saying riots are just the voice of the unheard?
00:30:29.520 Chris Cuomo on CNN, we played the clip last week asking, who says protests are supposed to be
00:30:35.620 peaceful? What about the Democratic mayors and the governors who allowed this to happen,
00:30:40.920 who allowed CHOP in Seattle to flourish and to grow with impunity until someone was murdered?
00:30:50.160 Like, do we hold the Democratic Party on the line for that? Did Kamala Harris visit Sequoia
00:30:54.900 Turner's family the way that she visited Jacob Blake, the man who was armed with a knife at his
00:30:59.840 ex-girlfriend's house where he was violating his restraining order that was issued because he had
00:31:05.580 sexually assaulted her in front of her kids? Are we saying her name or David Dorn's or Antonio
00:31:12.300 Mays' name? Are their names being worn on NFL players' helmets? Why not? Ask yourself that. Why not?
00:31:21.980 Because it's a farce. It's a farce. BLM and its related causes have raked in $10 billion,
00:31:29.180 according to The Economist, in donations since May. And reportedly, its chapters across the country have
00:31:34.160 seen none of that money. They are lining their pockets. The city of Detroit is suing Black Lives
00:31:41.080 Matter for civil conspiracy, not just because of property damage and disturbing the peace for rioting
00:31:45.880 while rioting, but also for allegedly purposely issuing false statements about police officers
00:31:52.680 in the city. I just want to know who in the media, on social media, in Congress, in the Black Lives Matter
00:32:00.640 and their organization, in their leadership gets held accountable for that damage and that violence
00:32:05.740 and those lives lost. The stories and Biden and Harris, soon to be our president and vice president,
00:32:14.980 their statements about Black Lives Matter being treated more harshly than Capitol rioters does not
00:32:21.400 tell the whole story. And therefore, it is divisive. It is unnecessary.
00:32:26.800 There are also people comparing certain pictures of Trump supporters getting through the Capitol that
00:32:32.940 we showed already with pictures like this, pictures of the National Guard standing ready for the Black
00:32:39.820 Lives Matter protests that happened in June there in D.C. But anyone can take one picture, compare it to
00:32:47.920 another picture and say, this tells the whole story, but it doesn't. Why aren't they showing a picture
00:32:52.980 like this from the New York Times that shows how many police were there that were actually guarding
00:32:58.440 the Capitol? There was eventually heavy police presence at the Capitol building, but there were a lot of
00:33:05.760 very bad decisions that led up to the lack of security that clearly had nothing to do with race, and I will
00:33:12.940 prove that. The D.C. mayor, Mayor Bowser, actually rejected more police help. A letter to the Justice
00:33:21.060 Department that Bowser wrote and then tweeted out said this, Metropolitan Police Department are
00:33:27.260 coordinating with its federal partners, namely the U.S. Park Police, U.S. Capitol Police, and the U.S.
00:33:33.040 Secret Service. She also said that 340 of the D.C. National Guard had been activated to address the
00:33:40.540 upcoming protests, but she stood against that. This was before, right before all of the riots and the
00:33:48.700 Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, she said Metropolitan Police Department is trying to get
00:33:53.480 more help. They're trying to call the National Guard, but she said, look, we don't want that. She said,
00:33:58.360 the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages
00:34:03.620 any additional deployment without immediate notification to and consultation with MPD if such
00:34:10.220 plans are underway. So she said, you want to send more help because people were expecting protests on
00:34:16.320 January 6th. The mayor of D.C. said, we don't want your help. And so that was one thing that happened.
00:34:23.180 That was one reason for the lack of security at the Capitol. The Democratic mayor of D.C. said,
00:34:29.240 we don't want and we don't need more help. Also, the FBI and National Guard both offered assistance,
00:34:35.820 reinforcements to Capitol Police on January 3rd, but Capitol Police themselves turned them down.
00:34:41.620 Capitol Police said that they were worried about the optics of active duty or National Guard troops
00:34:46.980 being deployed against Americans, which is what happened in June with Black Lives Matter. And so
00:34:52.740 National Guard and FBI said, we again, we want to help. We think that there's probably going to be
00:34:58.260 some problems there. There's probably going to be some unrest. So let us have a presence there.
00:35:02.680 Capitol Police said no. Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund was only expecting a peaceful rally. So he
00:35:09.520 rejected more help. So it doesn't seem like race had a role in this. It seems like really bad leadership
00:35:16.340 had a role in this. The D.C. City Council passed a measure to limit police force on June 8th after the
00:35:24.560 June 2nd protests and riots. So after Black Lives Matter set fire to the streets and rioted in D.C.
00:35:30.880 over the summer, the District of Columbia decided that the problem wasn't with that violence, but the
00:35:37.880 problem was actually with the police reaction to the violence. And so they passed a measure to do what
00:35:44.560 they could to neuter the police. It banned the use of tear gas and chokeholds, which, by the way, as we've
00:35:50.680 talked about on this podcast, as an expert talked to us about on this podcast, that chokeholds, when done
00:35:56.200 properly actually can save lives, save lives because it stops the use of lethal force to restrain a
00:36:03.900 violent suspect. And so this was a decision that was made very hastily. And that's exactly what the
00:36:09.800 Metropolitan Police Department said in the statement, that this measure actually harms the police because
00:36:16.980 it stops them from being able to do their jobs well. But if you want to know why less force was used
00:36:23.660 on these demonstrators and these rioters who were Trump supporters, that more force was used on them
00:36:30.400 than the force used on Black Lives Matter, it's not just because of the bad leadership of the
00:36:33.740 Metropolitan Police Department and Mayor Bowser. It is also because the D.C. City Council said, OK,
00:36:39.360 you can't do what you did to Black Lives Matter on June 2nd. There was also a federal problem here.
00:36:47.580 Democrats, according to the Federalist, blocked a resolution condemning mob violence. Here's what the
00:36:52.180 article says, quote, Thursday afternoon, this was a few months ago, Democrats killed a resolution aimed
00:36:57.840 at curbing mob violence. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, introduced the bill after a
00:37:03.240 man in Utah was mobbed, then shot by a group of rioters. The non-binding resolution offered a statement
00:37:10.720 of support for peaceful protesters and law enforcement who do their job well, while condemning violence and
00:37:17.140 the destruction of monuments across the country. Democrats blocked that resolution. They blocked
00:37:22.500 that measure in Congress. Now they're very angry about mob violence. They didn't care about it a
00:37:28.640 few months ago. They didn't want to do anything in Congress to actually stop it. Now, amidst all of
00:37:34.120 this, eventually, last Tuesday, the police did crack down. Not only were arrests made, but a woman was shot
00:37:40.700 and killed by Capitol Police. A white Air Force veteran was killed by Capitol Police. No one was
00:37:46.420 killed, thankfully, by police in the D.C. Black Lives Matter protests or riots over the summer. The
00:37:53.800 Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is calling for rioters to be prosecuted. Everyone who assaulted an
00:37:59.460 officer, damaged property, broke into the Capitol with force, who broke the law, should be prosecuted,
00:38:06.320 again, to the fullest extent of the law. A police officer also died from his injuries. So that is
00:38:12.800 tragic. The situation was absolutely terrible. People should be charged. They should be put in
00:38:18.320 jail for the crimes they committed. It's an awful situation. All I'm saying is that we should be
00:38:23.160 consistent. We keep hearing 93% of the Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful last year. Okay,
00:38:30.040 well, 99% of Trump rallies and protests are peaceful. But that's not really the question, is it?
00:38:35.240 No one said that everyone who marched with Black Lives Matter is a criminal. I certainly don't
00:38:39.060 believe that. I will fight for Black Lives Matter's right to peacefully march and protest all they want
00:38:46.000 without fear of brutality or restraint or punishment, whether or not I agree with every part of the
00:38:51.940 premise of their protest. The point should be that the 7% of Black Lives Matter demonstrations and
00:38:57.980 Antifa protests or riots that were not peaceful represent real lives and real livelihoods lost.
00:39:05.140 And almost no justice was served for this. The 1% or less of Trump rallies that have turned into
00:39:11.180 violence represent real lives lost and real property damaged and real danger threatened.
00:39:17.400 We can't judge all of Black Lives Matter by that 7%. We can't judge all Trump supporters by what
00:39:22.640 happened either. We also keep hearing that everyone who voted for him is complicit. So is everyone who
00:39:28.400 voted for a Democrat complicit? And what's gone on in Democratic cities across the country? Are you
00:39:33.440 complicit if you voted for a Democrat in the ripping apart of babies in the womb because you voted for
00:39:39.900 the party that you know supports that? There's a better case to be made that you are complicit in
00:39:46.520 the murder of babies for knowingly voting for that than it is that blood is on the hands of everyone,
00:39:53.540 all the 75 million people who voted for Donald Trump because there were a couple hundred thugs who did
00:39:58.200 something that they shouldn't have done. And so all I'm asking for is consistency. I'm not asking for
00:40:04.840 whataboutism. I'm not saying that we should say one is worse and one is not. But what I'm seeing is a whole
00:40:10.620 load of hypocrisy, especially from some people on the right who condemned the left-wing riots, but think that
00:40:16.980 this is totally fine. And then from a whole lot of people, a whole lot of people on the left who all of a sudden
00:40:23.060 have a problem with mob violence, but haven't had a problem with it for the past few months because
00:40:27.600 they agree with that cause. They agree with the reason why that violence is happening. We've talked
00:40:33.200 actually about the misinformation and the false premises of the demonstrations, the left-wing
00:40:38.420 demonstrations that happened last year. All I'm asking for is a little bit of consistency. I don't
00:40:45.100 want to hear that this has to do with white supremacy. This has to do with white privilege. Clearly,
00:40:49.020 it doesn't. The facts don't show that at all. All you're doing is looking at decontextualized video
00:40:55.180 versus decontextualized video, comparing those two things and saying, see, this is white supremacy,
00:41:00.760 white nationalism, and white privilege. It's clearly not. There are other reasons why there was a lack of
00:41:07.260 security and why what happened last Tuesday happened that have nothing to do with race. And the insistence
00:41:12.580 upon making it about race by our president and vice president-elect is just going to make matters
00:41:19.660 worse. And they're never going to be held accountable for their rhetoric. Why? Because they're Democrats.
00:41:24.780 That's how it works. Okay. Now into what we actually do about all of this craziness.
00:41:34.160 Some people are saying that I'm not asking people to do enough, that I'm asking people to
00:41:41.840 sit on their hands and just sit back and watch things happen. You know that that's not true. I
00:41:49.040 wouldn't have this podcast if I thought that that was the case. I wouldn't talk about how much I love
00:41:55.240 this country and how much I love liberty and how much I care about the preservation of the Constitution
00:42:00.460 and our republic if I thought that the best option was for us to sit back and do nothing.
00:42:07.660 But my emphasis has been on what I call the subtle resistance of radical obedience to God.
00:42:17.740 And what I mean by that is that obeying God is resisting tyranny. Early Christians faced far greater
00:42:27.200 threats than we are now facing. Christians around the world right now are suffering physical,
00:42:32.400 emotional, spiritual pains that we here in America still cannot even fathom. As we've talked about
00:42:38.640 before, free speech and religious liberty are the exceptions in history, not the rule. And now I think
00:42:45.280 for the sake of all people, we fight for it. We vote for it. We do everything we can to preserve
00:42:50.940 these things. They have been an amazing gift of common grace that God granted to the West,
00:42:58.820 and in particular America over the past few centuries. But listen, and I know this is going
00:43:04.220 to sound crazy to some people, but for those who trust in the sovereignty of God, you know that this
00:43:10.220 is true. The gospel is not advanced nor hindered by our right to free speech. God does not need policy
00:43:17.540 to display his power. The church is not shrunk or expanded by religious liberty. I know that sounds
00:43:24.640 crazy. Can God use these things as gifts to advance his kingdom? Yes, but he does not need them. God and
00:43:33.080 his will are not deterred one centimeter by the chaos that's going on, or unfortunately the tyrannical
00:43:39.980 crackdown on free speech that we have seen since then, and the possible tyranny that's coming.
00:43:46.420 Listen to this, Psalm 2, 1 through 6.
00:43:49.720 Why do nations rage and the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the
00:43:54.780 rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their
00:43:59.340 bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them
00:44:04.720 in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me,
00:44:10.280 I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. The Lord is sovereign over our governments. He is not
00:44:18.860 surprised. He's not thrown back. He's not wondering what's going to happen. A lot of people are scared
00:44:23.880 that the chaos that has been waged, not just last week, but over the past few months, is going to
00:44:29.460 end in a whole lot of censorship and tyranny, that it's going to give the soft totalitarians on the left
00:44:36.380 and excuse to try to control even more aspects of our life, that they are going to be more radical
00:44:43.180 than ever and pushing the legislation and policies that they want that will strip away many of our
00:44:50.360 civil liberties. That is the fear. As a reaction to the real chaos and the real crimes that were
00:44:56.140 committed last week, that Democrats, even those that condoned the violence that have been happening
00:45:01.400 for the past few months, are going to say, see, we really need to take control of this. Conservatism
00:45:06.060 is a threat. All 75 million people who voted for Trump are a threat. All speech is somehow an
00:45:12.100 incitement of violence, and they're going to use that as an excuse. They are using that as an excuse
00:45:16.400 to say, we can't hear opposition anymore. This is the exact kind of tyranny that C.S. Lewis talks about,
00:45:25.640 the tyranny that is exercised supposedly for the good of the populace. That is the most cruel,
00:45:32.160 he argues. And what I'm trying to argue is that obeying God and trusting the sovereign God is
00:45:38.680 resistance to that kind of tyranny. Psalm 37, 10 through 13 says, in just a little while,
00:45:45.020 the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there,
00:45:49.480 but the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace. The wicked plots against
00:45:53.680 the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his
00:45:58.740 day is coming. No tyrant, no amount of tyranny is any match for God. And you want to know why tyrants
00:46:04.780 and tyrannical ideologies hate Christians and Christianity so much, as I've said many times
00:46:10.300 on this podcast, because we are a thorn in the side of tyrants simply by refusing to bow down to their
00:46:15.020 idols, refusing to trust in their power, refusing to submit to any rule that opposes God's rules.
00:46:21.180 So what do we do? What do we do in the midst of this? What does this actually look like?
00:46:27.520 We obey God. And I know that's frustrating. That's a frustrating answer for a lot of people,
00:46:31.980 but hang with me for just one more second. First Peter 1, 3 through 7 and 14 through 16 says this,
00:46:38.280 blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy,
00:46:41.960 he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
00:46:46.560 dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, that is undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
00:46:52.300 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation, ready to be revealed in the last
00:46:57.260 time. In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various
00:47:03.000 trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes,
00:47:08.020 though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor the revelation of
00:47:13.800 Jesus Christ. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully
00:47:20.380 on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children,
00:47:25.140 do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who calls you is holy,
00:47:29.860 you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.
00:47:36.840 So people say, well, that's it. You're just, you're just called to do what God has always called
00:47:41.400 Christians to do. You're just called to holiness. You're just called to obedience. You're just called
00:47:45.200 to sober-mindedness. You're just called to boldness. You're just called to loving God and loving your
00:47:50.140 neighbor. There has to be more than that. No, that's it. You just obey God. William Wilberforce
00:47:57.340 was just obeying God when he led the charge against slavery in England. Corrie ten Boom was just obeying God
00:48:03.780 when she was providing refuge for the Jews from Nazis. Bonhoeffer was just obeying God when he was
00:48:10.180 speaking out against Hitler's regime. Mother Teresa was just obeying God when she was advocating on
00:48:15.440 behalf of the poor and oppressed. All of these people were doing, were loving God and loving
00:48:20.760 their neighbor. They were doing what God has always called Christians to do. They were ceaseless in
00:48:26.120 prayer. They were consistent in their love, their joy, their gratitude, believing, sharing, living out
00:48:31.440 the gospel. All they were doing was being obedient into the world. It looks radical. For Christians,
00:48:36.820 it's normal. And it did lead them to what we now regard as acts of history-changing courage.
00:48:47.800 But all they were doing was what Christ has called all of his disciples to do, denying themselves,
00:48:54.500 taking up their cross, and following Christ. And so what do you do? We wake up every morning and we
00:49:01.540 open our Bible, we open our heart, and we pray that God would help us love him and love our neighbor,
00:49:08.280 that we would love God so much that we will do anything he asks of us, that we will be as
00:49:13.300 uncomfortable as God wants us to be, that we will say exactly what he wants us to say, that we will do
00:49:18.400 exactly what he wants us to do, that we will go exactly where he wants us to go. And you know what
00:49:23.460 that might look like some days? That might look like loving your family. That might look like changing
00:49:29.140 diapers with joy. That might look like extending grace to your husband when you don't want to.
00:49:33.720 It may look like working harder and with more integrity than anyone else at your office.
00:49:38.260 It might look like sharing the gospel with your coworker, or it might look like speaking up to
00:49:43.420 your son's school board about the dishonest and postmodern and counterproductive curriculum that
00:49:48.860 they're learning in school. It might look like setting up a meeting with your pastor and your husband
00:49:53.220 and the elders to talk about the questionable theology that's been coming from the pulpit.
00:49:57.080 It might look like you speaking publicly about an issue that you've been scared to speak about.
00:50:01.820 It might look like you refusing to bend your language to the hyperpolitical correctness that
00:50:06.380 forces us to bear false witness about God's creation of biological gender. It might look like those
00:50:10.820 things. It might mean that you're no longer nodding along when your friends say things that you know is
00:50:16.280 not good or right and true. It is always unconditionally a refusal to conform to culture and an insistence
00:50:23.880 upon conforming to Christ. It is a refusal to accept, tell, or tolerate lies. It means fighting
00:50:31.500 for truth in every area of our own lives and becoming absolutely and explicitly resistant to
00:50:38.440 every form of deceit. That means if you hear me say something false on this podcast, if you hear me say
00:50:44.960 something that is not true or misleading, it means that you write me an email and you message me and you
00:50:49.280 tell me why. Now, do it kindly or else I'm just going to think that you're a troll. But tell me when
00:50:55.780 I say something that isn't true or isn't complete because I am committed along with you not to live
00:51:01.320 by a lie. And Steve Day said something on this podcast last week that really convicted me that there are
00:51:07.160 so many cases where we don't want to know the truth because it makes us uncomfortable. So we won't
00:51:12.040 research it. We won't look into it. For a lot of you, for a lot of people out there who you truly are
00:51:17.620 compassionate and you want to help your friends and you want to be as empathetic as possible,
00:51:22.940 you won't actually look into what the Bible says about gender and sexuality. Or you won't actually
00:51:29.800 look into the numbers, for example, about racialized police brutality. You won't actually look into the
00:51:35.040 facts about claims about systemic racism or critical race theory because you're afraid it's going to put
00:51:39.900 you in opposition to people that you love. Digging into the truth, and I'm not saying that I have all of
00:51:45.280 the answers on either of those things either. But we've talked about them many times. We've dug into
00:51:49.940 them many times. There are things in my own life I don't want to know the truth about because it makes
00:51:53.880 us uncomfortable. I think as Christians who want to conform to Christ, that we are not afraid of the
00:51:59.340 truth, that we commit ourselves to searching for it. And so if I get off path, if I am saying something
00:52:05.160 that is not true, as people who are also committed to not living by lies, I want you to tell me.
00:52:11.260 And I want us to talk about this because my promise to you is that I will never intentionally
00:52:16.460 lie to you. That doesn't mean that I haven't made mistakes or that I haven't failed or that I haven't
00:52:21.080 told a story that was incomplete or that I have never let bias cloud something that I say because
00:52:26.440 of course I have. I'm a finite being and I fail, but I pray every day that I would never say something
00:52:31.840 that is not true. Now, some of you listening on the other side of the aisle, you're like, wow,
00:52:35.420 well, you're failing at that every day. Sure, to you. And we might disagree on some of those
00:52:40.280 things, but that is never my intention. And I want you guys to hold me accountable. And I try to
00:52:44.840 hold you accountable too by doing my best. And again, I fail often because I'm a finite human
00:52:50.780 being who sins, but I'm trying my best to tell you that which is true. It will mean refusing to
00:53:00.840 believe in false theology, weighing everything against God's word. And I just want to give this,
00:53:06.640 I'm going to talk about it a little bit tomorrow and then we'll be done. Once again, long episode.
00:53:13.260 Disinformation divides. And right now when there's so much tech censorship and conservatives
00:53:20.020 and Christians are going to our, you know, alternative forms of social media, you can bet
00:53:27.320 that there are going to be people capitalizing on that, trying to share disinformation,
00:53:32.360 trying to spread conspiracy theories, trying to fear monger. Now there are things to be concerned
00:53:38.900 about and scared of. Sure. But there are people who are going to capitalize on your fear, who are
00:53:44.360 going to tell you that, which isn't true, who gain attention, gain followers, and may even gain money
00:53:51.440 from trying to scare you and whip you up into a frenzy about certain conspiracy theories. My prayer is
00:53:57.740 that especially as Christians, I can't, you know, I care more about the church than I do about
00:54:02.420 conservatism, that we would be as discerning as possible. That we would be able to distinguish
00:54:06.660 from a conspiracy theory, that which isn't true, and that which is true. And that God would give us
00:54:13.260 a spirit of wisdom. Try not to fall into the rabbit holes. Try to, try to distinguish the truth from a lie.
00:54:22.800 And if it's theological way, everything against the word of God. It's a very difficult time that
00:54:29.200 we are living in as a country. I think we see even more difficult times on the horizon. But our
00:54:35.340 commitment to truth, our commitment to the truth of God's word, our commitment to having faith in the
00:54:41.720 sovereignty of God, it keeps us sane. It keeps us grounded. And the hope that we have in heaven
00:54:46.240 keeps us joyful. May the world look at the church and say, why are they so happy still? Why are they
00:54:53.000 so joyful? Why are they still loving their neighbor? Why are they still so generous? Why are they still
00:54:56.940 so hospitable? Why is there still something so free about them, even though they're worried about
00:55:03.860 their earthly freedoms? Why does there seem to be some kind of internal freedom that is emanating from
00:55:09.240 the church? Why is that? And the answer, of course, is Christ in the gospel. Let that be our testimony.
00:55:16.260 Okay. That's all we've got for today. I will see you back here tomorrow.