Ep 597 ｜ How 'Inclusion' Destroys Countries, Churches & Communities
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Summary
Empathy and inclusion are two traits that sound universally positive but can actually be very toxic, not just for you individually, but also for society as a whole, especially politically. In this episode, Allie talks about the dangers of toxic empathy and how to balance compassion and true love while never abandoning the truth.
Transcript
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Hey, guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a great weekend. This episode
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is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie. That's
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goodranchers.com slash Allie. All right. Today, we are doing our part two of the traits that sound
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universally positive, but can actually be very toxic, not just for you individually, but also
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for society as a whole, especially politically. So last Monday, we talked about the dangers of toxic
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empathy. And just to summarize that, what I said was that empathy, putting yourself
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in someone else's shoes, taking on someone's pain can be a good thing, but it can also inhibit you
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from seeing things as they are, from thinking objectively. And when we don't see things as
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they are, when we refuse to look at a situation objectively, we aren't able to discern right from
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wrong or the truth from a lie. Someone's experience or someone's story can be so emotionally captivating
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to us that we allow that to characterize our understanding of reality as a whole. And that
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can be very dangerous because data can contradict someone's anecdote or someone's anecdote can be
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true. And it's not necessarily indicative of a system as a whole. We used race and stories about
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race and policing and police brutality and narratives about systemic racism as our primary example of
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that, because of course, no one wants to be a bigot. No one wants to be racist and no one wants to
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disregard someone's story of experiencing prejudice or discrimination. And so we allow people's emotional
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responses to the news stories that we see or someone's lived experience to then characterize
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what we think about the system as a whole or what we think about trends in the United States.
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They cause us to come to conclusions that aren't necessarily supported by data or by truth.
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And as people who love justice, as Christians are called to do, Micah 6.8 is a verse that you
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see talked about a lot by social justice Christians. But if we love justice, it's not just a feeling.
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It's not empathy. It is actually looking at a situation or a case impartially without showing
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favoritism to who we think is the weak person or who we think is the great, more powerful,
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influential person. We have to be able to see things as they are. We have to be able to look at the
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truth. And empathy can actually inhibit us from doing that. And so we talked about the balance for
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Christians how we balance compassion, which is important, and true love while never abandoning
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the truth. For the Christian, truth and love are inextricably intertwined. And so go back and
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listen to that episode if you haven't listened to it already. And I promised that we would do a part
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two. I thought about including this part that we're going to get into today in the last episode,
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but it was just going to be too long. So empathy and inclusion, I think, are two traits
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that we have been told are some of the highest values that we should try to aspire to as a country
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individually and as Christians. We are told in so many words that empathy and inclusion
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are a fruit of the Spirit. And they are not fruits of the Spirit because inclusion and empathy are not
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the same thing as kindness. They're not the same thing as faithfulness or gentleness or self-control.
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They can be subsets of those things, but again, not when they cause us to abandon the objective
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standards set in God's Word of what is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is false. And so we're
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going to talk about inclusion today and how inclusion, unfettered inclusion, unconditional inclusion,
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inclusion coupled with the abandonment of the truth is actually extremely damaging, not just to you
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as a person individually, but also to our country as a whole. And I'll give you some examples of that.
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I don't have to tell you who listen to this podcast faithfully or who have been paying attention at all
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to what's going on in our culture today that some of the most vulnerable groups in our society are
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under attack. We talk a lot about how children are under attack in a variety of ways. We often say that
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children are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments, whether we're
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talking about abortion, whether we're talking about gender ideology in transition, whether we're talking
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about divisive racial indoctrination in schools, whether we're talking about the unscientific
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COVID lockdowns and mask mandates. Kids are always the unconsenting and the defenseless subjects of
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progressive social experiments. And they have always been the subject of the predation of pagan and
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secular society going almost all the way back to the beginning, as we talked about last week in our
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in the Disney episode, we talked about the dark history of gender grooming, child sacrifice in one
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way or another has always existed. And when Christianity came around and disrupted the pagan notion
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that children and women and slaves are less than the adult free male and are just burdens on society,
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when Christianity came in and introduced this concept of radical equality, that we are all
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made in the image of God, of course, universalizing in Old Testament value of people being made in the
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image of God and then taking it to the next level, that we are all equally dead in sin apart from Christ,
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and we are all equally heirs once we are in Christ by grace through faith. That was a radical
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countercultural notion. And we can't even begin to quantify how it has changed the course of history
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and it has shaped cultures, especially Western cultures. I mean, the idea of the Imago Dei,
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the idea of all of us needing salvation through Christ, that is what has laid the foundation of every
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truly good and truly just movement for the equal rights of people, whether it's the abolition of slavery
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or whether we are fighting for the abolition of abortion. Let's not try to separate those movements
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from the gospel because that is what has motivated it. So Christianity has always been radically
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countercultural in our view of human beings and in particular in our view of women and children.
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We've talked about before how Ephesians 5, which contains passages that feminists really are angry
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about, that wives should submit to their husbands as to the Lord, but that wasn't the radical part of
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Ephesians 5 at the time that Ephesians was written. The radical part of that passage was not that wives
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should submit to their husbands, which was normal at the time in that wives not just had to submit to
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their husbands, but women had to also just submit to men in general. The radical part, the countercultural
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part of Ephesians 5 was that husbands were to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave
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himself up for her. So men, husbands were called to the kind of self-sacrifice, this kind of self-emptying,
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the self-denial that was really only expected of women and children, the elderly and slaves at the
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time. Men, the adult free male, which was seen as the center of society in a society that was kind of
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seen in concentric circles and as men being the most important. They were told in scripture that they are
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to love their wives in a self-sacrificial and humble way, love them so much that it was supposed
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to emulate how Christ loved his church. Christ died for the church. That was the radical part at the
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time. There's another part of this segment of Ephesians that says, yes, that children are supposed
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to obey their parents, which that wasn't the radical part. The radical part back then would have been
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that fathers were asked, were told not to provoke their children to anger, were called through
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gentleness in love of their child. And so again, we see how this concept of radical equality, that
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all people are dignified because they are made in the image of God, and then all Christians are equal
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under Christ. That doesn't do away with all hierarchies as we see as Ephesians 5 describes marriage,
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but it does introduce new requirements for that hierarchy. It does introduce a demand to love and
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a demand of self-sacrifice even for the person who is in charge, even for the person who is the head of
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the family, which is the husband. And so Christianity has been radical when it comes to how the world views
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women and children. At her best, the church has been a refuge for women and children, and we are still
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called to that. We are still called to that today. And my argument, how this ties into what we're
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talking about, is that unfettered and unbiblical empathy and inclusion has actually been harmful to
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these categories of people, to the most vulnerable. I know that we say we want to be inclusive and we want
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to be empathetic towards the most vulnerable, but I want to explain to you today, just as I did in
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the last episode about empathy, how it is actually harming these people and how it is actually
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inhibiting our ability to carry out justice for the most vulnerable people in our society,
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specifically, as we'll talk about today, women and children. So I just, I know that was kind of an
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aside. I wanted to set this up biblically and kind of give us some historical context for why this stuff
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matters. So let's talk specifically about how women are kind of under attack today, actually
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because of empathy and inclusion. So when it comes to women, we're not just facing our erasure
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because of inclusion, because you have to include all people by saying things like chest feeding and
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birthing people, but also like we are dealing with women as a whole mistreatment and oppression that
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comes from that erasure. So what I mean is we're not just getting rid of the word woman in feminine
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terms in our language, pregnant people, people with uteruses, chest feeding. I mean, that's truly
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so objectifying and offensive by the same people who say you can't reduce a woman down to her biological
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functions or down to her body parts. That's not what, that's not what makes a woman. Well, those are the
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same people that are using disgusting terms like people with a uterus. Really? I mean, that really is
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like newspeak. If you have ever read 1984, they expand the language in 1984 while also reducing
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our concepts down to like the crudest terms. And so your mind is actually limited in what it is able
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to comprehend and what it actually knows. That's something that happens in 1984 and that's certainly
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happening now. People with uteruses. There used to be one word for that. And now we've expanded it to
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actually shrink our consciousness and our understanding of humanity. NPR actually recently
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announced its official editorial position that is that they will use the term pregnant people instead
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of pregnant women. And that in itself is absurd and troubling, but it's worse than rhetorical erasure.
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It's worse than words. There are tangible real life consequences to this erasure. And NPR said that
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they were doing this in the name of inclusion. That was the justification that they gave in this
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long article that said the reason that we're talking about pregnant people and the reason that,
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you know, we're not going to say pregnant women anymore is because of inclusion. When really like
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you are excluding people using that language because women don't feel like we are covered by that.
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Like we have, I mean, women have worked really hard to show that, hey, women give so much value to
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society that burying a child and raising children is not a less than responsibility. It's not a less
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than role in society. It's really important. And Christianity, like I said, has helped in society's
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understanding of just how important that is and just how important women are. And now we don't even get
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our own word. Language changes never happened in a vacuum and they never happen without consequence.
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That's something that the left understands. They are excellent at capturing the culture through
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changes in language. Abortion isn't baby murder. It's just reproductive health. It's just women's
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rights. And who's against women's rights? Soft on crime policies aren't lawlessness and anarchy and
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injustice. They're actually criminal justice. And saying pregnant people is an erasure. It's actually
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inclusion. But here's the deal. Inclusion of one group sometimes means the exclusion of another group
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or at least the exclusion of the rights or safety of another. Not always, but sometimes. And in the case
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of men and women or men identifying as women and including them in women's groups, that is the case.
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So think about this in a non-political sense. If you included your entire neighborhood into your home,
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your entire community to live there, and you just decided people can come in and out as they please,
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you would be excluding you and your children's right to a safe home or ability to have a safe home
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with enough resources for you. You can't have both. You can either have the entire neighborhood or
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community living in your house, or you can have a calm, safe, roomy home for you and your family.
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You can't have both. You might be able to include some people from your community and still have a safe
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and roomy home for your family. But you can't include everyone in your community and still
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accomplish that. You are excluding the ability of your children to be able to have a safe environment,
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a comfortable environment in which they can live and grow. This is why inclusion in and of itself
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is not a virtue. Inclusion by itself in and of itself is not a virtue. It is not a goal. It is not a good
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aim of a country, a company, a team, or anything. Colleges don't include everyone. Athletic teams,
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Broadway casts, marriages, homes do not include everyone. And if they do, they actually cease to
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exist because standards and boundaries and definitions is actually what makes them what they
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are. They cannot be, without some kind of exclusion, what they were meant to be. They cannot perform
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their function. So if a cast of a movie included everyone that tried out, included people that
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couldn't act, it would be a bad movie. No one would want to see it. And it wouldn't deliver what it was
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meant to deliver. It wouldn't be able to function the way it's supposed to function. Every entity must
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exclude because every entity has standards. It has to, to maintain the integrity of the, of the function
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and the purpose of the entity. That means that every entity must discriminate. That is a word that we
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are told is universally negative, that you never want to be discriminatory, but no one actually
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believes that. You have to be discriminatory. There are people that you can't hire for your company.
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You can't choose everyone. There are people that you can't pick for your team. There are people that
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you wouldn't choose to come into your house. You discriminate against people by excluding them.
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Exclusion and discrimination have, as I said, negative connotations in our world today.
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And inclusion and equality have universally positive connotations. But the truth is,
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any entity will fail if they are endlessly inclusive and ensure everyone has equal outcomes.
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So no discrimination. The best entities exclude and discriminate against those that would threaten
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the function, the safety, and the goals of their organization or their country or whatever it is.
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Teams discriminate against players that aren't good enough by excluding them from the roster.
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You discriminated against other guys before you met your husband by excluding them from your list
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of marriage prospects. Businesses discriminate against people outside of their company by excluding
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them from employment and maybe within their company by excluding them from promotion.
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Thus, the athletes, the guys in your life, the potential employees, and the employees in your company
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did not enjoy equality. They didn't enjoy equal outcomes. They were discriminated against.
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They may have been offered equal opportunity, but they weren't given equal outcomes.
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Exclusion and discrimination are a necessary part of our lives because they protect the form and
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function of organizations and entities. If you include everyone who wants to come to America,
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into the country, we cease to be a country. We cease to be a sovereign nation. We don't have borders.
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We don't have citizenship, which means there are no rights that come from citizenship, which means
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citizens have no voting power, which means we have no legitimate elected, legitimately elected governing
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body, which means we have no legitimate laws and no legitimate protection. We become a place of
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lawlessness ruled by anarchy where no one is protected. And the most vulnerable women, children,
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the elderly, the poor, the disabled are on the chopping block. If you include every faith into
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Christianity, every doctrine into Christianity, it is no longer Christianity. John 14, 6, Jesus says,
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I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, not through Buddha
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or Muhammad or yourself or Marianne Williamson, through Christ. Christianity is an inclusive religion
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in that it doesn't matter what you've done, what your nationality is, where you come from, how rich you are,
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how smart you are, but it's exclusive in the sense that there is one way and a one way only to be
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forgiven of your sins and reconciled to God, and that is by grace through faith in Christ.
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If Jesus isn't the only way to God, Christianity ceases to be Christianity. It's just, I don't know,
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some form of agnosticism or universalism. So it is with almost everything. There must be standards.
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There must be limits. There must be definitions. There must be boundaries. And most people seem to
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understand that. So most people understand what we're talking about in the necessity of exclusion
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and discrimination. And I'll talk about the different kinds of exclusion and discrimination
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in a minute, because I know that that might be what you're thinking. Well, you know, some
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discrimination and exclusion is wrong. And obviously, I agree with you. We'll get to that difference in
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just a second. But when we say that discrimination and exclusion are universally objectively bad,
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we're actually employing some cognitive dissonance there, because most people understand this when it
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comes to companies or colleges or castes. And at one point, not too long ago, we generally agreed
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that discrimination and exclusion is acceptable as long as it is on merit, or in the case of religious
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organizations because of a biological or theological or moral belief. But progressivism, the current
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left doesn't really seem to believe that anymore. Progressivism has a very, in my opinion, wonky view
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of inclusion. Progressivism in the United States, as much as they say, therefore, inclusion and equality
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and anti-discrimination, they're actually not. What they mean by inclusion is greater representation of
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the people that they deem marginalized to the exclusion of everyone else. And so that's another
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that's another reason why we should be really careful to say, oh, yeah, we want to be inclusive,
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because what progressives mean by inclusive is actually not just inclusive. We should include
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everyone. They don't mean that we should include Christians or we should include conservatives or we
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should include heterodox viewpoints. They mean they want to include their groups to the exclusion of
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other groups. And so they actually understand, progressives actually understand, that inclusion
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necessarily typically means the exclusion of other groups. That's why conservatives, Christians,
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can't be tricked by that word because it's not entirely innocuous. For example, affirmative action
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policies in academia, in the government, or in corporate America discriminate against, exclude whites and
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Asians in favor of black Americans. In fact, every institutionalized form of discrimination today
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actually cuts in favor of black Americans and against white and Asian Americans. That's a fact.
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You cannot find me an equity or an inclusion policy or program that does not explicitly seek to elevate
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black people, even if that means excluding equally qualified or more qualified white and Asian
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candidates. That's been true for years. That's not just since George Floyd. Like that's been true for
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decades in the United States. There's actually a case before the Supreme Court right now about this
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regarding discrimination by colleges against whites and Asians. I think it's going to be decided by the
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Supreme Court this summer. Progressives are also okay with inclusive policies that exclude the rights of
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those that they deem less important or that they view with hostility. The Equality Act is a great example of
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that. Churches and religious schools would be forced to include employees whose sexuality or so-called
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gender identity is against their faith is against their faith's teachings to the exclusion of these
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organizations' rights to practice their religion sincerely. So Christian hospitals would be forced to
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include abortions and sex change surgeries probably under the Equality Act. But what is really meant when people
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say that we should be for inclusion and against discrimination, like in the most truly innocent and sincere
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way, what most people mean, I'm not talking about a lot of people on the left, I'm not talking about
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progressive ideologues, but I think, you know, just the average, moderate, center-left, center-right,
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and conservative American, when they're saying we're for inclusion and against discrimination,
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typically what we mean is that we should include people of all races and sexual orientations and gender
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identities and disabilities and so on, insofar as we are judging everyone by the same standards of merit.
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So typically what is meant is that we shouldn't discriminate, we shouldn't discriminate against them
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because of things they cannot control, they should all be judged by the same standard, which is the
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qualifications with the abilities that they bring to the table. But it's important to understand there are
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different kinds of discrimination. And Thomas Sowell talks about this in his book, Discrimination and
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Disparities. There's Discrimination 1, Discrimination 2. There's a certain kind of discrimination that we
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just talked about, that everyone discriminates, every entity has to discriminate against people,
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you have to exclude people. Because you have standards, some people don't meet those standards,
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and so you don't hire those people, you don't include those people. And then there's the discrimination
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that most people, most sane people are against, which is you should not discriminate against
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someone because of their immutable characteristics. Unless, again, it's a Christian or religious
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organization that says, well, you don't live in a way that aligns with our faith, and so we are going
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to exclude you because of that, which actually would be some kind of qualification. So most people are
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against that kind of discrimination. Like if you polled people on the left and the right, they would agree
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that you shouldn't discriminate against a person for a job because of their immutable characteristics.
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Sure, we can exclude people based on, you know, marital qualifications, but we shouldn't exclude someone
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based on something that they can't control. Most people would probably even say, you shouldn't cease to be
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friends with someone because of an innate characteristic. Most people would say, when it comes to marriage,
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you shouldn't exclude someone as a prospect because of their race or disability. So most people, regardless
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of political affiliation, would agree with this, or so it would seem.
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However, as we've already touched on, when we talked about affirmative action and the kind of inclusion
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exclusion that the left really means when they use these terms, the left and the right do not agree
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on who should be discriminated against and how, because progressives are absolutely for racial
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discrimination, as we just talked about, as long as the discrimination cuts in favor of Black Americans
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and against whites and Asians, which is exactly what every single affirmative action policy does.
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Progressives will apply different lower standards for Black people for the sake of inclusion,
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inclusion and equity, even if it means that you are excluding other people who reach higher
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standards. And so it is also, so is this kind of dissonance, this kind of hypocrisy, this kind of
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duplicitousness from the left when it comes to inclusion. So it is when it comes to the inclusion of
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so-called transgender people into sex-specific spaces. When a man who calls himself a woman,
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a woman who gets to swim against women, that is excluding the right of a young woman to a fair
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competition. Because as we've talked about so many times, men, regardless of their hormone therapy,
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regardless of the length of their hair or the nail polish they wear, or the name they decide to be
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called by, have a larger heart. They have greater lung capacity. They have greater bone density,
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more muscle mass than women, which translates into even amateur male athletes being faster and stronger
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than elite male athletes. Study after study proves this. No amount of propaganda is ever going to change
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it. As I like to say, human nature, truth in general, is like a beach ball. And ideologues,
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activists, crazy people can keep trying to push that beach ball underwater. It's going to eventually
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pop back up. So by including a man in women's sports, you've excluded a woman's ability to compete
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fairly. When you include a man in a woman's locker room or bathroom, you've excluded a woman's right
00:26:43.660
to not have to see or be seen by or be next to a naked man. We used to think that a woman had a right
00:26:51.060
not to be sexually harassed. And now apparently women don't have that right. And you hear there are
00:26:58.080
activists. They're anti-trans or I don't know if it's anti-trans. I guess it's more just like pro
00:27:03.380
sex protected spaces activists who identify as lesbians who often call out these pro-transgender
00:27:12.700
LGBTQ groups that say that it is bigotry for a lesbian not to want to date or be with a man who
00:27:23.760
identifies as a woman, that that's some form of bigotry. And so you're supposed to, that's another
00:27:31.520
thing. Or let's just use like a person who is attracted to the opposite sex. If you are to
00:27:39.760
include, if it is inclusive to include so-called transgender people in your dating pool, then that
00:27:48.240
means that you are no longer heterosexual because you are being forced for the sake of empathy and
00:27:54.740
inclusion or you are being pressured for the sake of empathy and inclusion to date a woman who identifies
00:28:02.940
as a man if you are a woman. And we are told that that is what you have to do in order to be inclusive
00:28:09.600
and empathetic. You are excluding your right, your ability to actually be with someone that you are
00:28:17.880
attracted to and you cease to be the thing that you are. You see the problem with unconditional and
00:28:24.400
unfettered inclusion that it in itself is not a value. And that's what happens when for the sake of
00:28:29.880
inclusion, you are erasing the biological distinctions of male and female. When you refuse, for example, to say
00:28:35.320
that only women, exclusively women, have uteruses and can't give birth and only men, exclusively men,
00:28:41.560
have testicles and you instead say, well, actually women can have a penis and men can give birth,
00:28:48.280
then you no longer have any justification for the separation or the special protection of the sexes.
00:28:55.000
That's a problem, not just when it comes to female athletics, not just when it comes to female locker
00:28:59.720
rooms and bathrooms, although those spaces are really important, but also in domestic abuse shelters
00:29:04.680
where women should be protected against men. Yes, even men who say that they are women and they
00:29:11.320
need to be protected in prisons right now in states like Washington, in Oregon, in California. I'm pretty
00:29:18.740
sure this is true in Canada. I'd be shocked if it weren't that a man who identifies as a woman, even if
00:29:24.440
he has a history of domestic violence, even if he has a history of pedophilia, the worst kinds of sexual
00:29:29.560
predation and abuse that you can possibly think of. If he says that he is a man, there is no
00:29:34.520
hormone requirement, there is no kind of scientific requirement or surgery requirement or anything
00:29:40.200
for that man to then be transferred to a woman's prison just because he says he's a woman.
00:29:45.040
That's what postmodernism does. Postmodernism, which says there really is no truth except for
00:29:49.380
your truth, except for what you decide is true. There is no objective reality. There is no science
00:29:55.800
that can be easily comprehended. Everything is something that is kind of intangible and only
00:30:02.220
these activist ideological academics can really tell you what's true. And these ideological activist
00:30:09.260
academics who have pointless degrees in gender studies, they are saying with their fake authority
00:30:17.640
that for a man to be a woman, all he has to do is say that he's a woman. That's the problem
00:30:22.360
with credentialism. That is the problem with postmodernism. And that is, of course, in essence,
00:30:29.700
a product of godlessness because God is the source of all truth. And scripture tells us who he made us
00:30:38.060
as, which is male and female. So of course, when you abandon God, you're going to end up abandoning
00:30:42.020
truth. Even the most obvious truth that there is a separation and distinction, an important distinction
00:30:47.100
between men and women and women because we are the weaker sex. I know that some people say this is
00:30:53.540
internalized misogyny or this is whatever it is. This is some kind of sexism to say women are
00:31:02.620
physically weaker. On average, the vast majority of us are shorter and smaller and weaker. We have
00:31:08.820
smaller bones. We have less muscle mass. We don't have as much aggression because we don't have as much
00:31:14.320
testosterone. We are weaker and we are subject to male predation. That's why the vast majority of
00:31:22.300
domestic abuse victims of rape victims are women. And the vast majority of people who are perpetrating
00:31:29.160
those crimes are men. That's not a coincidence. That's not societal conditioning. That's not some
00:31:34.800
kind of stereotype. That's been true for all of human history. And yet that is the consequence of
00:31:43.660
unfettered inclusion. Unfettered inclusion means that you are unable to create safe spaces,
00:31:52.080
something that I thought the left cared about, but they're really only talking about the danger of
00:31:56.300
hurt feelings. They're not talking about the danger of hurt bodies of women who are forced into prisons
00:32:01.820
with men who identify as women. Unfettered inclusion excludes our ability to protect the most vulnerable,
00:32:10.400
to protect women and children. And that is why, once again, the church should be not just a refuge for
00:32:19.620
these women and children, but a beacon of light and of clarity. That's actually why it matters so much,
00:32:27.540
guys, that our language is clear, that we don't give in on the pronoun stuff, that we refuse to call a man
00:32:34.480
she or her, that we refuse to call a woman he or him, even if that is their identity, because we deny
00:32:41.740
that it is possible to identify as something other than what the body that God gave you says that you
00:32:48.900
are. There is no biblical or scientific truly category of gender identity as something that is a
00:32:55.380
departure or detached from sex. And so because we believe that God is good, because we believe that
00:33:02.980
he is the creator of the universe and he is the authority over right and wrong, what's good and
00:33:08.660
what's bad, what's true and what's false, because we believe the first chapter of the Bible, that God
00:33:14.060
made us in his image, male and female, because we believe that and we know that he is love, 1 John 4, 8,
00:33:23.000
therefore everything that he says, everything that he designs, everything that he defines, everything
00:33:27.800
that he includes or excludes is all done and said from love, because we know that and we know therefore
00:33:34.860
that we cannot out-love God, we cannot out-truth God, we cannot out-smart God, we cannot out-justice
00:33:41.120
God. It is the most loving thing that we can do to agree with him. Therefore, the most loving thing
00:33:46.180
that we can do is affirm that God made us male and female, not just because of all of the very tangible
00:33:52.500
and physical and psychological consequences that this ideology is placing on young people,
00:33:57.820
but also just because it's obedience. What does Jesus say loving God looks like? Obeying
00:34:03.500
his commandments. It's not unfettered inclusion. It's not unconditional empathy. It is not the
00:34:09.860
abandonment of truth because you want to make someone feel comfortable. I'm not saying we should
00:34:14.020
be unnecessarily harsh or brutal in our language. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that the truth
00:34:19.780
cannot be extracted from biblical love. What does 1 Corinthians 13 say? As we talked about last week,
00:34:28.780
love, biblical love, the only true kind of love that exists, rejoices in the truth. It doesn't
00:34:33.820
rejoice in wrongdoing. It rejoices with the truth. And we've also talked about, which we won't get into
00:34:39.860
right now, the dark roots, the demonic history of this gender ideology that I think that if we knew
00:34:46.460
the connections, this ideology and the people who started this ideology, the people that were on the
00:34:51.960
front lines of this activism, if we knew the true nefarious motivations and the perversion that is
00:34:58.320
innate in this ideology, we would realize that the people who are a part of it today, they have actually
00:35:05.560
fallen prey to its predation. And the most loving thing that we can do if we want to be lovers of
00:35:11.940
justice, lovers of true liberation, liberation from sin, is speak the truth clearly in love.
00:35:18.240
The church has always been, at her best, a refuge for the most vulnerable, which throughout history
00:35:24.600
has been mostly women and children. And we're still seeing that today in new ways. We're seeing new
00:35:31.660
forms of child sacrifice. We're seeing new forms of female subjugation. And so the church needs to
00:35:37.900
take up the torch that has always taken up, that it has always been our role to be a beacon of truth,
00:35:46.100
to be a lighthouse in the storm, to be a refuge of clarity. The world is so confusing and chaotic
00:35:52.380
and turbulent. Let us be a refuge of clarity for people who are confused. You cannot do that unless
00:35:58.940
you are speaking clearly. Do not fall into the trap of saying, well, we just have to be inclusive
00:36:04.560
and loving or inclusive and empathetic. We should be loving, truly biblically loving.
00:36:10.260
But don't buy into the trap that true biblical love means unfettered, unconditional, worldly
00:36:15.120
inclusion and empathy because it doesn't. These things can actually be inhibitors of true biblical
00:36:21.340
love of the most vulnerable. Okay, guys, that's all we've got for today. Thank you so much for
00:36:29.340
listening. As usual, we will be back here tomorrow with a fun Q&A that I know that you guys are going
00:36:37.260
to love. If you love this podcast, please leave us a five star review. Subscribe on YouTube as well.