Ep 508 | My Response to John Piper, Tim Keller & Big Eva
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about my husband's 31st birthday and how I used it as a catalyst for a public celebration of his birthday. I also discuss the anti-vaccine movement and why I don't think Christians should get the flu vaccine.
Transcript
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hey guys welcome to relatable happy tuesday hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far okay
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today we're talking about some good stuff that i know you guys are going to like we're going to
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talk about tim keller russell moore david french and john piper we're going to talk about some
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things related to their views about the public health establishment apparently or at least one
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member of it and we're going to look at john piper's argument that came out today that christians
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should get the vaccine there's a lot there i won't be able to dissect his entire argument but i'm going
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to try to at least give an overview of my thoughts there are things that i really agree with that i
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really appreciate about what he said there are some things that i would uh push back on um october 19th
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it's my husband's 31st birthday so even though i've obviously already told him happy birthday
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today just a public happy birthday to my wonderful husband crazy for me to think that when i met him
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he was 23 and actually it was um i used his birthday to try to like uh make make a move um because he uh
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so we were working out at the same gym this would have been 2014 that's how i met him it wasn't like
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a you know la fitness or something like that it was like a small crossfit type gym and we were taking
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the same classes and i don't even remember really the first time i saw him or even thinking oh i really
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want to talk to that person but we had talked casually during class and i knew that you know he was
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cute and i wanted to maybe get to know him more and i could tell that he felt the same way but we
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weren't dating or anything at this point so october of 2014 but i had remembered that a couple weeks
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earlier he had told me that his birthday was coming up and i held that date in my mind i didn't say
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anything about it but i think it was so it was on his birthday that i showed up to gen to the gym and i said
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happy birthday and i could tell that he was very appreciative and pleasantly surprised that i
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remembered his birthday that he was turning 24 and that was it hooked him in now i got two of his
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babies it works ladies so remember that guy's birthday and tell him happy birthday he might be
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pleasantly surprised and then you might end up marrying him and he becomes your baby daddy you just
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never know happy birthday to my husband 31 he's super old i'm a very young 29 um anyway okay let's talk
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about everything we're going to talk about today uh remember yesterday when i said that i am more
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interested in disagreeing with believers than i am arguing with non-believers and that is because
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sincerely i care i i care first and foremost about the church i care about truth i care
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about us being united as much as we can in the things that are true that peace if possible truth
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at all costs whether that means one side or the other accepting rebuke or correction when necessary
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well i have many disagreements with what is typically referred to as big eva so if you don't know what that
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is you've heard of big tech you've heard of big government you've heard of big business big pharma there's
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also big eva and that stands for big evangelicalism a lot of you already know that but i'm guessing a
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lot of you don't i remember hearing that or seeing that on twitter a year ago or two and thinking what
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the heck is that and then i pieced it together big eva represents the corporate bureaucratic part of
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evangelicalism so evangelicalism less as a part of the protestant faith and not even the political
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label evangelicalism but kind of like the institution the people at the top big eva is typically these
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are some characteristics of people who are just like establishment evangelicals that's one way to say it
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typically anti-trump anti-abortion pro-biblical sex and gender pro-critical race theory and pro-social
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justice russell moore the former head of the ethics and religious liberty commission that's the policy arm of
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the southern baptist convention tim keller pastor author beth moore and others kind of in that crowd
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are part of big eva these are people who are believers with whom i agree on on the vast majority
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the vast majority of things or agree with on the vast majority of things tim keller in particular
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i've learned a lot from i recommend a ton of his books meaning of marriage reason for god every good
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endeavor gosh i could go on and on he has really helped me his writing his apologetics his theology
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has really helped shape my faith in a very fundamental way however i also disagree with these
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people politically and please i've just got to say this disclaimer even though i know that
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most of you understand this whenever someone publicly disagrees with someone there will always be
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someone in the crowd who says why are you attacking this person never in this entire podcast am i going
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to attack the people that i'm talking about today but public ideas or ideas articulated publicly are fair
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game for refuting publicly as well they might still disagree with the things that i have to say that's
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fine i am not maligning them as people but i will question some of or one of the things recently that
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they have put forward and i'll specify what that is in a second but another person that i would include
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in this group is david french he is a christian attorney he's a writer who has written recently
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a full-throated defense of some of the basic tenets of critical race theory i think i talked about that
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on my podcast when he did and i went back and forth with him on twitter about it um in my opinion he is
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very lopsided in his criticism politically i have met david french i think he's a very kind person who has
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done a lot for the defense of the first amendment and has written a lot of very insightful conservative
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stuff over the years one day i'd like to have him on my show to discuss some of our disagreements
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people on you know in our camp on the evangelical right give me a hard time forgiving him the benefit
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of the doubt not that i think i'm in like some authority or anything like that but i do like i will
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constantly give believers the benefit of the doubt in the same way that i hope to be given the benefit
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of the doubt i going back to kind of what we talked about yesterday where allegiance actually lies i want
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to be extremely charitable in my disagreements with believers but the thing is is that the trump era
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trump himself really kind of broke a lot of people in big eva the way that it broke a lot of people in
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general especially on the left the trump era did some weird things to evangelicalism in general but
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the top dogs in big eva decided that they were going to take the side of pro-social justice anti-trump
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and there really grew the spirit of condescension it seems like mostly exhibited on places like twitter
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and podcasts and things like that and i i would say there was also this embarrassment articulated
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and expressed by big eva toward fellow christians who did hold sincere reasons for voting for trump
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and for questioning secular narratives surrounding things like systemic racism police brutality
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social justice i mean after george floyd happened people and big eva were so quick to jump on the
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secular black lives matter narrative about systemic racism and police brutality and had no interest in
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looking at the data or questioning the popular dogma coming from the mainstream left like they just had
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no interest in the facts whatsoever it was it was really crazy and that was i think kind of a fault line
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that was a that was a fissure that was something that i certainly took the more controversial less
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mainstream stance on that put me in opposition not purposely but just consequently against the people who
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are so quick to latch on to everything that cnn said about you know systemic racism and social justice
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in the united states and i think they did so in a way that is not biblical even so i think that they are
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worth these ideas are worth continuing with these disagreements are worth talking about and i don't want
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to minimize i don't want to minimize the concerns of people on the other side of those issues to share my
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same faith but i do feel like big eva minimizes the concerns of conservatives like me when it comes
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to things like critical race theory and social justice theology and joe biden if you want to know what i mean
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by those things by the way if you're thinking define your terms i have done so many episodes on social
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justice theology and critical race theory those are probably the things i have talked about maybe the most
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frequently in addition to abortion and gender ideology all you have to do is type in those
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keywords and relatable on youtube wherever you get your podcast they'll come up also allybestucky.com
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click podcast click categories there's categories for these things so you can go listen to all those
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episodes to know exactly what i'm talking about but big eva claims the biggest threat we hear from
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people you know like beth moore is trumpism and um white nationalism or christian nationalism and while big
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eva does tend to agree that for example abortion is wrong and that gender is male and female according to
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genesis 1 nowadays you will often find them a little bit quieter about it talking instead about nuance and
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empathy and you know not wanting to be divisive dancing around these subjects for days rather than
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just saying what is clearly true according to the god who tells us that he is love like there is
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definitely this feeling not just among big eva but also the people who profess to be you know
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progressive christians that they can out love god by not saying what the bible says is true and what the bible
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says is false what the bible says is good what the bible says is bad it's a whole lot of hubris and
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while big eva may personally hold to many of the same views that i do in the last few years especially
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while trump was president it seems like those common stances have taken a back burner publicly in
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exchange for a whole lot of mushiness in my opinion and secularism honestly when it comes to political and
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cultural issues so this is leading to what i want to talk about with these people i guess i i shouldn't
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be surprised when i see someone like russell moore tim keller and david french publicly praising it almost
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tripping over themselves to praise someone like francis collins the former head of the national
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institutes of health who just resigned we're gonna get to exactly what they said and what i think about it in
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just one second okay so here is what david french upon the announcements um that francis collins
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resigned from the head of the nih said on twitter he said francis collins is a national treasure thank you
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for your faithful service here's what russell moore said i admire greatly the wisdom expertise and most of
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all the christian humility and grace of francis collins i cannot wait to see how god uses him
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next tim keller says as good as nih director he's tagging francis collins is it his craft he is a
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better friend and so these are pastors who are promoting a particular person who professes who
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professes to be an evangelical christian himself and if you don't know anything about francis collins
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maybe you think that this is really no big deal and certainly his public image is very non-controversial
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and you're probably thinking he must be an awesome guy these big name christians are all publicly
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praising him russell moore praises christian humility david french called him a national
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treasure tim calvary is publicly praising him and like i said collins has long professed to be an
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evangelical christian he is admired by people both within and outside of the church the problem is
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though that collins oversaw some of the most grotesque practices while he ran the nih including using the
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body parts of aborted babies for research so this is according to the federalist in may of 2021
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quote in the fall of 2020 researchers at the university of pittsburgh published a study titled
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development of humanized mouse and rat models with full thickness human skin and autologous immune cells
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in studying how organs reacted to pathogens or infections on human skin researchers grafted full
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thickness human skin as well as thymuses livers and spleens from fetuses onto rodent bodies creating
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what they call humanized rat models the study says researchers obtained fetuses at the gestational
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age of 18 to 20 weeks from elective termination of pregnancy through mcgee i don't know how to pronounce
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that mcgee women's hospital of the university of pittsburgh medical center with the university of pittsburgh
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health sciences tissue bank researchers use skin from both the scalps and backs of fetuses gosh this
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is heartbreaking terrible to read so that they could compare graphs with and without hair graphic images
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from the experiment show that by 12 weeks fine human hair or baby hair can be seen growing darker and
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longer than the surrounding short white hairs of the mice i remember when the story came out and these
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images came out it's just grotesque it's heartbreaking you're talking about baby hair i think about that
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david delight and he's an undercover pro-life journalist at the center for medical progress
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he alleges that the university of pittsburgh has a relationship with the local planned parenthood who he
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says provides aborted babies to the university the federalist article goes on to say some of the worst
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violators in planned parenthood's abortion and fetal research practices were trained at pitt delight and
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said appointing to ppfa medical director dr jennifer russo who trained as an abortionist at pitt and was
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later caught supplying dead fetuses dead babies this article says fetuses same thing to a for-profit california
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tissue procurement company gosh guys like just a reminder again how evil not just abortion the act is it's
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unequivocally evil there's no debate about that especially as christians just the process is so
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barbaric and grotesque but the entire for-profit industry of aborting babies it's awful then the
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federalist again goes on to say and this is where we get the link to someone like francis collins
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this study was funded by the taxpayer funded national institute of health and in part by dr anthony
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fauci's office the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases niaid so you can go to the
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university of pittsburgh study yourself and then you'll see under the acknowledgments that it says
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this work was supported by the national institutes of health national institute of allergy and infectious
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diseases so this is not something that we are just we are just making up but fair warning if you click
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on that link you will you will see pictures of the scalps of aborted babies grafted onto mice
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it's very disturbing dr fauci and dr collins both oversee the funding of their institutions or or within
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their institutions because they lead these institutions and so even if they are not directly
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involved in this kind of research which i wouldn't be surprised if they have been they do call the shots
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about where the money goes and yes this is a bureaucracy there are multiple people in charge
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but when you're the head honcho everything rises and falls on leadership i mean can you imagine as a
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supposedly evangelical christian supporting a project like this can you imagine as a supposedly
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pro-life christian praising someone who did support a project like this we're not talking about oh he
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was just somewhere in management we're talking about the head of the nih directing the funding
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to a project that uses aborted babies and as you'll see not just 18 to 20 weeks but much
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later uses the skin the scalps of these babies to make humanized mice i mean is this even something
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that's necessary how even ethically from a secular perspective i'm not even sure how you support this
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although secularism tends to lead to stupidity sooner or later this is the most grotesque immoral barbaric
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stuff you can think of this is not some well you know nuanced personally pro-life politically pro-choice
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nonsense this is out now evil supported by the institution run by a guy who claims to be a
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christian who some big-time evangelicals are apparently applauding now this is not all that surprising that
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collins would direct something like this he does not claim that he believes that life starts at
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conception there's a 2010 new yorker article that quoted collins or reports that collins sees an
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embryo as a potential life and gosh i hear that so much from just like know nothing people who who truly
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know nothing about biology and somehow want to justify abortion but this scientist says that he sees
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an embryo as a potential life which it just doesn't even make any lot it doesn't make any logical sense
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that he doesn't know when life actually begins again this is the geneticist and i just it's it's
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mind-boggling to me it's absurd that this that this is being said by not just a scientist but a christian
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it's obvious that a human is a it's a human at conception at the moment of fertilization because
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then what else is he or she i mean right then you've got full human unique dna it's not something
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else it's not some other species we know that the baby isn't the embryo isn't dead because that would
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be a miscarriage and we know that biologically and logically can't be anything other than a human
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being so what else would it be except for a living human you know that he's had to have thought about
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this kind of thing the guy's 71 years old he's been uh you know professing christian in the scientific
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industry for a very long time now i will give him that the question of personhood not the question of
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humanity but the question of personhood of having rights and value is a philosophical question that
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can't be answered just by you know in strict scientific means but it's answered in christianity
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the faith that he says he holds on to in which we see physical life and human value
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inextricably intertwined and again you can go back and listen to the many many episodes that
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we have done on abortion to learn more about that and to hear me really dig into all of those points
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but but this is this is collins he is much more secular in his thinking at least in regards to this
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stuff than he is christian in his thinking and by secular i don't mean neutral or scientific i mean
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anti-biblical science.org wrote about collins in 2019 quote when obama named him nih director
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a concern was that his outspoken christian faith would influence his leadership his religion
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science.org goes on to say never became an issue he followed obama's order to loosen rules for stem
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cell research which some christians oppose and has defended fetal tissue research despite criticism from
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anti-abortion groups so science.org of course is probably celebrating oh don't worry he says he's
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a christian but that's never influenced anything that he did in leadership well that's a little
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troubling isn't it collins has long supported embryonic stem cell research even though he knows
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the embryos are destroyed in the process so i guess him saying that he doesn't believe embryos are a
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human life again i would love for him to define just logically biologically what they are then
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um i guess that's his attempt at searing his conscience about all of this uh the pioneer of stem cell
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research dr james thompson sat in 2007 quote if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you
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at least a little bit uncomfortable you have not thought about it enough i think that's true of a lot of
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people in their support for abortion and things like this they haven't thought about it enough and
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i would say that's especially true if you're a christian right like if you're not deeply uncomfortable
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with this then i i think that you haven't thought about it enough or you have thought about it and
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you're just ignoring what you know to be true what you know to be biblical christians are not called
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to leave their faith at the door when they enter into a job like if we believe that god created the
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world that he created science that we shouldn't be worried about science and ethics somehow
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contradicting the christian faith if you believe that all truth is god's truth all morality is god's
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morality which the christian does believe then why would you try to compartmentalize your life to say
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you know i believe this about god but it's not going to influence how i run an organization or
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conduct science again secularism which drives most scientists obviously isn't neutral because
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you're seeing scientific textbooks and scientific academics now show that they're really more
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ideological when it comes to things like gender when it comes to things like sex and so obviously
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it's not secularism isn't neutral no world view is neutral as we so often say and that's obvious in
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this too that collins was driven by secularism in his leadership of the nih which led to uh which led
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to these grotesque practices that we're talking about or at least funding the grotesque practices
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that we're talking about um he also did an interview last december with russell moore when moore was still
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at the erlc saying that all christians should only be going to church virtually so this is last december
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this is in an interview with the ethics and religious liberty commission uh he also held up
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his cloth mask in this interview and he said this is a life-saving medical device and i'm i'm sorry
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i'm sorry i'm not making a theological point about that statement it's just not true it's just not true
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the university of waterloo we've talked about this so many times found that a cloth mask at best
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filters out 9.8 percent of particles so if you're gonna make the argument that in order to really
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love your neighbor you need to wear a mask well then apparently you're not loving your neighbor as
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much as the person who's wearing an n95 mask which filters out like 40 to 60 percent of particles or
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something like and those cloth masks by the way as soon as they get wet they lose their effectiveness
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so at best at best it's 9.8 percent effective and probably after 20 minutes it's zero percent
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effective so how can you say that's loving your neighbor how can you say that's not some kind of
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political statement look at the data compare the case and hospitalization rate of states with and
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without mask mandates and you will not find a difference compare sweden which doesn't have mask
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mandates to the countries with a similar population size or a state like michigan with a similar
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population size and you will see that you will see no difference in some um and in some cases
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sweden has actually done better than those states and countries who have had mask mandates so when
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we're talking about science that's troubling to me that's troubling hearing a statement like that
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again that makes me think that he is more ideological than scientific in some ways but really the most
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troubling part of all of this to me is the enabling of the funding of projects that use the intentional
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destruction of babies for research this is also in the federalist quote collins's nih provided nearly
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three million dollars in tax dollars to support a fetal organ harvesting operation by the university of
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pittsburgh in its quest to become a tissue hub oh satanic for human fetal tissue ranging from six to 42
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weeks 42 weeks gestation in addition collins championed the unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell
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research which involves the destruction of human embryos okay 42 weeks gestation guys like forget about
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collins not knowing when an embryo is a life which is stupid in itself but how about a seven pound
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squirming feeling baby that's about to exit the birth canal also there's another there's another part of
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this that is so grotesque and it should give any evangelical pause before they publicly you know
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congratulate them honor them point people to them as basically a hero but there's more that i think
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that we as christians should really wrestle with when it comes to hoisting this person up as some kind of
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champion of christianity you know within the within the government all right i want to i want to read
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you also this message this official message from francis collins celebrating pride month this year this is
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on nih's website here's a statement quote each june the national institutes of health joins the rest of
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the country in celebrating pride month and recognizing the struggles stories and victories of those
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who are lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer intersex and others under the sexual and gender
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minority umbrella i applaud the courage and resilience it takes for individuals to live openly and
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authentically particularly considering the systemic challenges discrimination and even violence that
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those and other underrepresented groups face all too often here we go as a white cisgender
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and heterosexual man evangelical christian francis collins says i have not had the same experiences
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but i am committed to listening respecting and supporting those individuals as an ally and advocate
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i know that developing allyship is critical as we continue to make nih and the world a more
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inclusive place for all i mean come on that's just sell that's just celebration of it that's straight up
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celebration of all of this you know it's one thing to say you don't work for a christian organization
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i get that so it's one thing to say here's what i believe and know to be true and i still believe
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if you're francis collins you could say i still believe that these people are made in the image of god
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they're worthy people no matter how you claim to identify and they deserve good scientific research
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they deserve good health care they shouldn't endure violence or you know some kind of truly actual in
00:27:55.380
the literal sense harmful marginalization okay that's one thing i i get that you're not running
00:28:01.520
a church you're not running a christian non-profit but it's another thing to say what he just said i mean
00:28:07.660
you are accepting all of the premises all of the definitions of secular progressivism again we are
00:28:15.000
seeing that secularism isn't neutral it makes moral statements unscientific statements like what is
00:28:20.100
cisgender really scientifically francis collins so as a supposedly evangelical christian touted by these
00:28:28.080
very mainstream influential evangelical leaders celebrated by russell moore as a pillar of christianity
00:28:34.780
this guy is celebrating the redefinition of sex of sexuality of gender he has denied
00:28:45.000
genesis 1 in these statements so you're telling me that the guy who can't even support genesis 1
00:28:51.620
believes in the much more controversial part of the bible which is the gospel john 14 6 jesus says i'm
00:28:57.380
the way of the truth and the life no one can come to the father except through me i don't know i don't
00:29:02.140
know like i said i want to give christians the benefit of the doubt but is his statement are his actions
00:29:07.940
as a leader of the nih distinguishable at all from what you know a far left atheist would have done
00:29:15.160
and said i i don't see any distinction between those things maybe you could criticize what i'm saying and
00:29:21.040
saying you know what there's a lot more to all of these things there's a lot more good that he has
00:29:25.080
done that he has said um and you know that's maybe that's true i'm sure not everything that he did was
00:29:31.280
anti-biblical or everything that he said was wrong but you see the difference between when christians
00:29:36.260
you know take over you know they lead an institution versus when secular progressives do secular
00:29:42.560
progressives are never afraid to force an entire organization entire group an entire institution to
00:29:50.620
conform to their ideology because they still operate under this myth that their ideology is
00:29:55.940
is like neutrally good objectively good um whereas christians because we're so scared of people
00:30:03.420
calling us you know theocrats or calling us i don't know people who want to impose our views on
00:30:10.620
everyone else we we allow secularists to influence us and we bow down to their language like secular
00:30:19.900
progressives are so much more evangelical than a lot of people in big eva are like they're so much
00:30:26.180
more sure they're so much more courageous i disagree with them on so much but they are so courageous and
00:30:32.180
bold and uh coercive honestly that's not something to admire but they are bullying and they are um
00:30:41.860
undaunted uh when it comes to trying to push an institution push a business push a corporation push
00:30:50.100
an organization push a church push a group of people towards their ideas i would simply like a christian to
00:30:56.340
show a fraction of the courage not talking about some of the nastiness and bullying that we see from
00:31:01.220
secular progressives but why can't a christian stand up and say this is what i believe and i believe
00:31:08.420
this to be good and right and true and i am at least the very least not going to buy in to the
00:31:15.220
ridiculousness of today's secular sexual revolution uh the nih's website also has all kinds of interesting
00:31:24.340
guides to how we for example um should refer to a person by the pronoun zur if they want to um if
00:31:32.580
they want us to or zero i don't know as it says so like there's this infographic on the website that
00:31:40.020
says that some people go by zay some people go by see spell i can't i can't i can't spell s-i-e some people go by zee
00:31:54.340
i can't i can't i can't even i can't get through this some people go by z uh spelled z-i-e some people
00:32:02.100
go by here h-i-e like some that's pronouns apparently that people go by and that used in a sentence the
00:32:09.460
nih the national institutes of health funded by your tax dollars who has been run for over a decade by
00:32:15.540
an evangelical christian um they say in a sentence this is how we would use this quote zay is a writer
00:32:22.020
and wrote that book here self i like here and here ideas um the graphic can be found on nih's website
00:32:31.540
it recommends um that we put our pronouns in our email signature in our name tags and that we should
00:32:38.740
start meetings with everyone announcing their pronouns and where at work are we joking guys is
00:32:45.540
this real are we what what exactly are we doing here that's what that's what i wake up every day
00:32:51.860
when i look on twitter and i see the ridiculousness like this morning i saw that the hhs the health and
00:32:58.580
human service health and human services under um under joe biden announced that rachel levine
00:33:06.020
is the what did it say the first female something the second part is really kind of pointless because it says
00:33:13.460
the first female the biden administration announces that rachel levine is now the first ever female
00:33:19.380
four-star admirable admiral um in the public health corps rachel levine guys is a man okay rachel
00:33:27.860
levine is a man who identifies as a woman i don't even like that language because that seems to give some
00:33:34.900
credence to this and so when i open twitter and i read something like that i say what exactly are we doing
00:33:41.620
here what's what's going on i mean when in regards to francis collins what's the point of having
00:33:47.540
christians in these institutions if they're not even going to infuse a semblance of truth into them
00:33:52.260
forget biblical truth like i'd settle for some biological truth at this point and people wonder why
00:33:58.180
we christians but just people in general because as we talked about last week there are plenty of
00:34:02.980
people who are not christians who are saying hey like a man is a man guys and these are people who
00:34:09.460
don't really care how people you know live their lives or they don't really care about pronouns
00:34:13.940
necessarily but they're still like guys a man is a man a woman is a is a woman like i just think it's
00:34:19.380
so funny that now we're calling people people with uteruses uh people with a with a prostate i'm like
00:34:26.420
oh we use gosh we used to have shorter words for those phrases where we were breaking down two groups
00:34:33.860
people so people with a uterus people with a prostate i wish we could think of just like a
00:34:39.060
shorter word to identify those two categories oh well let's just keep going with this new speak i mean
00:34:45.700
it's crazy like and people wonder why we mistrust this the same institutions who claim to have a monopoly
00:34:51.700
on truth and reason and science and medicine and the fact that these same people christians in big eva
00:34:58.340
think that the big threat to the country and the church is trump supporters and not this absolute
00:35:04.660
rot that has not only totally infected all secular global and national institutions but is tolerated by
00:35:10.580
and sometimes even endorsed by people who bear the name of christ like francis collins can idolatry of
00:35:17.140
trump in america be dangerous and this progressive nonsense be dangerous 100 we kind of talked about that
00:35:23.860
yesterday but when we're talking about the size and scope of each threat it's not even it's not even a
00:35:29.700
competition it's not even close the absolute rot the depravity the corruption in our public health and science
00:35:37.060
institutions is staggering it's sickening and i'm not saying that francis collins was intimately involved
00:35:42.820
with all of it i'm not saying that russell moore david french and tim keller can't be friends with and respect
00:35:47.860
someone with whom they disagree but ask yourself ask yourself this do you think that they would
00:35:53.860
openly praise someone in politics or in the government who is say controversial because
00:35:59.780
of their support for trump or their denial of systemic racism i don't know i feel like they
00:36:06.100
wouldn't publicly support that person because they would be afraid of attaching their name to someone
00:36:10.900
that a lot of people on the left consider problematic and yet i mean they're able to look past the
00:36:16.500
funding of aborted fetal research and the total embrace of the validity of all concepts of so-called
00:36:22.180
gender identity and sexuality and say that this guy is a national treasure an exemplar of christian
00:36:27.860
grace and humility like there were no reservations there no caveats honestly i i would take less issue
00:36:35.780
with a christian praising someone like ruth bader ginsburg because ginsburg didn't claim to be a christian
00:36:41.620
and you'd also you just say something like ginsburg was brilliant she was wrong on abortion of course
00:36:46.180
we believe this as christians she was wrong on other things i believe as a conservative but what
00:36:51.540
a stunning career and incredible mind she had that's true that's how that's genuinely how i feel and
00:36:56.420
that's probably maybe what i would say about her if i was talking about her same with trump he is far
00:37:02.900
from perfect but christians can still like him and like what he has done but am i going to say that
00:37:08.100
trump is a beautiful example of christianity no so why the apparent embrace and the endorsement of the
00:37:16.900
faith of someone who so obviously violated religious ethics now tim keller's statement doesn't necessarily
00:37:23.460
endorse his um his faith and it was really more russell moores that did that still i have a hard time
00:37:31.620
believing that they would hoist someone up with whom they disagree when it comes to trump and these are
00:37:38.740
also the same people who just believed that trump was so morally grotesque especially david french so
00:37:44.420
morally grotesque because of what he said that it is just impossible to vote for him or support him
00:37:49.380
that this is compromising christian faith you're saying that francis collins and everything that he
00:37:54.580
supported and said didn't compromise the christian faith but someone who said yeah you know what i think
00:37:59.140
that joe biden's going to lead in a radical way and not going to be good for the country i think
00:38:03.060
i'm going to vote for donald trump which is true by the way we have been vindicated sadly um you think
00:38:09.700
that like i've just i'm confused i'm confused about how you come to that conclusion it's just very
00:38:16.340
strange it's very strange isn't it all right we got a little bit to say about john piper and his argument
00:38:23.220
about vaccines uh but before we get to that okay so i want to quickly respond to an article that was
00:38:33.380
published today by pastor john piper now i've talked about john piper on this podcast before i recommend
00:38:40.660
his podcast dear pastor john and his resource desiring god a lot because it's extremely thoughtful
00:38:48.740
and i find him to be um a very sincere humble and godly person now when he published an article last
00:38:57.460
fall implicitly i don't even think he meant to but uh implicitly basically saying that voting for joe
00:39:04.980
biden is the same as voting for trump because trump's pride is just as bad as biden's support of abortion and
00:39:11.060
i vehemently disagreed with that and i just thought it was so sometimes i do think piper and this is one of
00:39:17.380
the examples that we're going to talk about today in an effort to add clarity he actually adds a lot of
00:39:23.860
confusion because he doesn't just say what he wants to say sometimes he seems to kind of cover things
00:39:31.220
up with a lot of rhetorical uh flourishing that makes things confusing and i've also i i've always kind
00:39:39.300
of found that about piper i think it's just because he's a very brilliant person um but he clarity i would
00:39:44.740
not say is necessarily always his strength and i certainly think that that is true when it comes
00:39:50.980
to today's article about um about vaccines okay so the headline of this article is a reason to be
00:39:59.220
vaccinated freedom so he uh the i'll summarize the article by saying he is arguing for christian liberty this is
00:40:07.940
something we talked about last week we talked about the centuries old debate among faithful christians
00:40:15.620
about vaccination and it goes back to smallpox inoculation in the 1700s and disagreements
00:40:24.740
you know increase in cotton mathers were on one side of the debate there were other christians on the
00:40:29.380
other side of the debate then later on there was jonathan edwards there was i believe it was john
00:40:34.980
newton who were all debating about this and really where we landed was that it is an area
00:40:39.060
of christian liberty and that's really mostly a message to the people who are on the side of
00:40:44.900
vaccine mandates who or who condemn christians who don't want to get the vaccine as not loving their
00:40:52.260
neighbor and not true christians it is an area of christian liberty although there are some people
00:40:56.820
who are extreme on the anti-vaccine side who also think that people are ungodly if they take the
00:41:02.180
vaccine and i do believe it's an area of christian liberty so mostly i agree with what piper says
00:41:08.580
but he starts off the article with some facts that i think are a little bit misleading it's obvious
00:41:13.780
where he is leaning to me it's obvious that he is leaning in the direction of you need to get
00:41:19.300
vaccinated it's the smart thing to get vaccinated it's the wise thing to get vaccinated i also
00:41:23.940
believe that he implies that it's the loving thing to get vaccinated even though he lands in an
00:41:28.020
area of christian liberty it very much seems like his persuasion or his desire to persuade people
00:41:33.460
to get the vaccine in the same way that it came across in the article about trump and biden that he
00:41:38.340
desired to persuade people to vote for joe biden or at least to persuade people that it's fine to vote
00:41:45.060
for someone who won't who openly supports the taxpayer funded aborting of babies through nine months
00:41:51.860
of pregnancy and who denies things as basic and fundamental as biological sex um he says that he
00:42:00.180
didn't mean to do that but again don't add your voice to the conversation if you're only adding
00:42:06.020
confusion for people and you seem to implicitly be leaning in a direction that you say that you're not
00:42:11.700
certainly in this article it seems like he is leaning towards saying it's the loving smart thing to do to
00:42:16.260
get vaccinated so he says with these facts nearly all covet 19 deaths in the u.s are now in people
00:42:22.020
who weren't vaccinated from may 2021 infections and fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than
00:42:28.020
1200 of more than 107 000 covet 19 hospitalizations that's 1.1 percent um 150 of more than the 18 000
00:42:39.220
covet 19 deaths in may were in fully vaccinated people that's about 0.8 percent and then he goes through
00:42:45.620
some of the other statistics that basically he is trying to say that look most of people that are
00:42:50.820
dying from um covet 19 are are um unvaccinated but i think what's important is that they're still when
00:43:01.380
you look at the percentages sound really big but when you look at the actual numbers like when you look
00:43:06.900
at the numbers of people that are dying it is still very rare to die from covet it is very very rare for
00:43:13.620
most people it's under one percent your chances of dying from covet that doesn't mean that you don't
00:43:18.900
have a chance doesn't mean that it can't happen i actually know unfortunately of this um you know
00:43:24.740
healthy 40 something year old guy i don't even know if he was vaccinated or not who lives in my community
00:43:31.300
who died now there actually seems to well i won't even get into all of that but it's real it affects
00:43:38.820
people and um it's sad so i'm not saying that it's a hoax or that it's fake but when we're looking at
00:43:44.820
the numbers we can't just look at percentages of people who are vaccinated versus unvaccinated who
00:43:49.780
died you have to look at the people the the percent chance that you have in general of dying whether
00:43:56.660
you are vaccinated or not and it's still extremely rare and he doesn't give those actual numbers he is
00:44:04.420
only giving these numbers and that paints a picture that i personally think is a little bit misleading
00:44:09.700
even if these numbers are statistically are statistically true um now there are some other
00:44:16.980
data points that i think that we do have to consider so deaths within 60 days of a positive
00:44:22.980
test by date of death non-vaccinated made up 20 of those deaths vaccinated with one or two doses
00:44:31.460
made up 80 of those deaths so that is data coming out of the uk that's a little strange i'm not saying
00:44:39.460
that that means that you are across the board more likely to get sick and die if you're vaccinated i'm
00:44:45.300
not saying that i'm just saying there is some competing data here um just in i'm reading i'm reading
00:44:51.940
this tweet that we can put up uk reports 223 covet 19 deaths this is reported today um the highest daily
00:44:59.140
number of deaths since march 79 of the population age 12 and older is fully vaccinated i mean that
00:45:06.740
makes us ask some questions about the efficacy of um of the vaccine so if we look at um some data
00:45:16.660
this is data pulled from the new york times that comes up if you just look on google and we if you're
00:45:22.180
watching this you can uh you can look at the charts that we'll put up but if you look at the united states
00:45:30.260
um new deaths are um about the same place that they were um almost a year ago so they're a little bit
00:45:41.060
lower than they were for example in like january february and they're a lot higher though than they were
00:45:49.700
in july the daily death rate in the united states is a lot higher than it was in july that's hard
00:45:57.540
to understand when you look at the vaccination rate that has only increased since july so now we have
00:46:06.260
65.5 percent of the population fully vaccinated 73 percent has had at least one dose now if the vaccines
00:46:16.500
were the number one way that we can mitigate that we can prevent the deaths uh from covid then it
00:46:25.140
wouldn't make a whole lot of sense because that's what we're told it wouldn't make a whole lot of
00:46:28.420
sense for the death rate to be so much higher now than it was in july i think really what the data shows
00:46:34.900
i do think that the data shows that um that vaccines can help prevent in most cases severe sickness and
00:46:44.020
death i'm not refuting that from the best available data that we have do i think it is the number one
00:46:50.180
way that we can mitigate the spread and that we can lessen the likelihood of death i i'm not so sure
00:46:57.460
that the data really bears that out honestly it looks like it's just more seasonal you saw a high rate
00:47:05.220
case rate and death rate in the south over the summer that's because it's hot and so people are inside
00:47:10.900
now that's going to switch you're going to see in the much more highly vaccinated states in the
00:47:16.500
northeast you're probably going to see case rates and death rates go up there because people are
00:47:21.780
spending more time inside now is the time people in the south they're actually spending outside um and
00:47:27.300
in the sun if you look at a country like australia australia's cases and deaths are on the rise right
00:47:35.140
now i mean they had zero deaths from like last november to this july zero covid deaths were
00:47:43.780
reported and now it's on the rise again to almost the same point as it was at the peak of their death
00:47:50.100
rate back in august of 2020 now how is that possible when last year they had zero vaccines and now they have
00:47:58.580
55 percent of the australian population fully vaccinated 71 percent has one dose are we not
00:48:06.100
allowed to ask these questions well the answer is no we might even get this video taken off of youtube
00:48:11.300
but i think it's worth asking i'm not saying that that's a reason not to get vaccinated but i'm saying
00:48:16.900
that john piper isn't necessarily presenting all of the relevant information that we need to go through
00:48:24.260
here to think about whether or not it is um whether or not it's something that you are are going to do
00:48:32.260
dr robert redfield he is the head of uh the cdc he told martha mccallum or he was the head of the cdc
00:48:40.100
he told martha mccallum on fox news that 40 percent of the recent covid deaths in the state of maryland
00:48:45.220
were among people who are fully vaccinated i mean that's a pretty large percentage that still means that
00:48:51.620
the majority were unvaccinated but 40 is something it's something at least for people to consider
00:48:59.940
that is true in a large number of states with high vaccination rates you are seeing a large number of
00:49:07.620
the people who are dying vaccinated and now that makes sense if you have a larger number of people
00:49:12.500
vaccinated then naturally you are going to have a larger number of people who die from covid
00:49:16.820
be vaccinated but it's still something to consider when people are looking at the effectiveness of
00:49:22.660
something um of say natural immunity versus vaccine immunity i don't think that piper lays out that case
00:49:32.420
clearly and fairly enough when he is going through these data points it seems lopsided that's something
00:49:38.100
i take issue with now where he ends on all of this that this is an area of christian liberty and if you
00:49:44.820
have truly weighed both sides of this if you have truly looked through the data if you have truly
00:49:49.620
thought and prayed about this then this is you are free to decide you are free to choose um what you
00:49:56.660
think will glorify god the most what you think will serve um yourself and your neighbor the most then
00:50:02.980
you are free to not get the vaccine and i appreciate that he articulates the freedom on that now what i find
00:50:09.780
strange about this though is that he did put out a podcast not too long ago um that argued that christians
00:50:17.780
should not take a vaccine made from aborted babies or at least i believe that is what he argues here he
00:50:25.060
says in the case of moderna this claim has um has since been called into question about them using fetal cells
00:50:32.500
in research but it's actually true you can go to cog for life dot org and uh that organization has
00:50:39.620
compiled all the research and all the facts about this there are ethical conversations and disagreements
00:50:46.020
that christians in good faith can have about using vaccines that are derived from fetal cells or at least
00:50:52.340
the research and development involved fetal cells there's an ethical debate about that but where piper landed on
00:50:58.180
this in his podcast is he basically says we should never do evil that good may come so he actually
00:51:04.420
refused the argument that just because a vaccine might save lives that we should support the use of
00:51:11.060
murdered babies um in the research of them uh he says that we have to testify to the sanctity of life and he
00:51:21.380
says god blesses principled action in his name so he ends the podcast that he put out a few months
00:51:27.540
ago on this um he says uh the observation is that acting on principle in this case the principle that
00:51:34.500
we do not want to be complicit in the desecration of dismembered human beings acting on principle
00:51:39.780
often does not look like the most obvious way to be a blessing to the greatest number of people so
00:51:44.580
he's saying the secular world is going to typically disagree with someone refusing a vaccine that was
00:51:49.620
derived from in any way aborted fetal cells um but he says if you try to act on the principle of not
00:51:57.140
participating in the desecration of these children by avoiding medicines developed from their dead
00:52:01.140
bodies someone will say but look look at all the good that is coming through the medication and they
00:52:05.700
will say that they can't see the good that may be coming from your principled action so what i'm
00:52:10.980
saying here is this piper says god has ways of honoring and blessing and multiplying the effectiveness
00:52:16.020
of principled action in his name which to the human calculation may appear futile so he's saying
00:52:22.020
someone who refuses the vaccine because they don't want to be involved in the desecration of baby image
00:52:28.580
bearers that god is going to bless what he calls a principled action he says so i'm saying let's not
00:52:34.580
act as researchers or as ordinary consumers in a way that desecrates the bodies of unborn victims
00:52:39.940
and treats those children as though they can be killed and their tissues harvested for our benefit
00:52:45.540
now in today's article where it seems to me that he is encouraging people to be vaccinated
00:52:50.820
he doesn't even he doesn't even wrestle with this like he doesn't even wrestle with the same argument
00:52:56.100
that he made a few months ago he does mention it in passing at the end of today's article but he doesn't
00:53:03.160
even talk about unless i missed it somewhere in between he doesn't even wrestle with the argument that
00:53:09.460
he made just a few months ago that he seems to be saying that the principled action for someone who doesn't
00:53:14.360
believe in the desecration of human bodies is not to take the vaccine now i think that there are good
00:53:19.580
arguments against piper's stance on not taking the vaccine because of you know deriving from fetal cells
00:53:27.300
al moeller has articulated both sides um of that argument but i haven't seen publicly uh john piper
00:53:35.940
wrestle with that and then he seems to come out with an article today that again appears to be convincing
00:53:41.160
people to be vaccinated based on the data points that he is bringing forth even though he ends in
00:53:46.520
the place of christian liberty so all i'm asking for is a little bit of clarification like a little bit
00:53:50.880
more from john piper on this to me this is another example of him lending really more confusion than
00:53:56.700
clarity on anything else seeming to lean a certain way but maybe he doesn't mean to lean a certain way
00:54:01.720
but i've got to see more like i'm i rely on him for a lot of wisdom i heard what he said a few months
00:54:07.780
ago i'm hearing what he says today i'm not seeing how those two things are you know are working
00:54:13.660
together and i'm not even telling you where i stand in all of that i'm not even telling you where
00:54:18.460
i'm standing on this particular vaccine i haven't even talked about that i'm talking about principled
00:54:22.640
biblical conversations about that i think that's missing i think that's missing from today's
00:54:27.480
article in light of what he said in the past all right that's all i've got time for today i will