Trump seems to deem himself a shepherd who will not leave us nor forsake us. Christianity today delves into the pronoun debate, and Jim Gaffigan calls a room of celebrities at the Golden Globes pedophiles. We ve got all of this and much more.
00:12:06.820Yeah. Okay, so last Friday, former President Trump posted a video titled God Made Trump, which sounds like an AI voiceover parody based on Paul Harvey's God Made a Farmer monologue.
00:12:18.340So it appears that the video was created by the Dilley meme team.
00:12:23.860Don't know what that is, but they have an X account.
00:12:26.260Trump supporting group of comedians and political commentators, not the official Trump campaign.
00:13:09.320A shepherd to mankind who won't ever leave nor forsake them.
00:13:13.140I need the most diligent worker to follow the path and remain strong in faith.
00:13:19.240And know the belief of God and country.
00:13:22.300Somebody who's willing to drill, bring back manufacturing and American jobs, farm the lands, secure our borders, build our military, fight the system all day,
00:13:35.120and finish a hard week's work by attending church on Sunday.
00:14:19.120And the reason he was afraid to fire Fauci, he said, is because he knew that people of the New York Times and people on the other side would have completely eviscerated him.
00:15:30.660I just think it's really tone deaf because obviously a lot of his supporters are Christians.
00:15:37.900But at the end of that little clip, it says, you know, God created a man who would do all this hard work and then attend church on Sundays.
00:16:02.000I think you would have run it by your pastor and he would have looked at the transcript and he would have said, yeah, I don't think that we're going to go with this one.
00:16:22.180I'm not saying that I do know his heart.
00:16:24.840But again, as Brie very astutely just observed, if he were being discipled, as all Christians are to be discipled, I'm not sure that he would have called himself a shepherd to all mankind that will never leave us or forsake us.
00:16:39.460And like this is the problem with politics in general.
00:16:43.140And this is something I think we especially see on the left is the idolatry of particular politicians as as a kind of messiahs, people who are going to bring God's kingdom here on earth and they're going to fight all of our battles.
00:17:00.280They're going to go to war against the enemy.
00:17:02.520Now, I do think that is what people like about Trump is that he does seem like a warrior.
00:17:17.420But again, going back to COVID and the policies that he endorsed and the people that he put in place and refused to take out of place like Fauci, I'm just not sure if that is an apt description of him.
00:17:30.760Look, he's got his strengths, but he also have has his weaknesses.
00:17:34.640And I think one of those weaknesses is that he sees himself and a lot of his biggest fans see him as something that he is simply not simply something that simply cannot be backed by his record.
00:17:51.960And the things that he has done and the things that he has said, in reality, I think he cares a lot what people think.
00:17:57.420I think he cares a lot what the left thinks.
00:17:59.340I think he cares a lot what moderates think.
00:18:01.880I think he cares a lot what The New York Times thinks.
00:18:05.840I wish that were not the case, but when I see him in his campaign running to the left of people like Ron DeSantis, criticizing Ron DeSantis for his heartbeat bill that he signed into law in Florida, making statements about to Megyn Kelly about, you know, transgenderism and the validity of that movement.
00:18:28.080In some ways, I'm not saying that he is like all on board with that, but I I see someone who will really acquiesce to the progressive side.
00:18:41.000He's just this is my thing with Trump.
00:18:43.060I like a lot of things about Trump voted for Trump twice.
00:18:49.700And of course, do I think that he would be better than Joe Biden?
00:18:52.480And yes, Amy, I mean, there are few people in this entire world that would not be better than Joe Biden, but he's not conservative enough for me.
00:19:01.800He's just not conservative enough for me.
00:19:04.100And so I am not particularly swayed by what I think is a very blasphemous video.
00:19:12.180It's a blasphemous video to call yourself a shepherd.
00:19:16.080And I think it is an inaccurate depiction of how strong and brave he has actually been.
00:19:26.660It's probably not doing it for most Christians.
00:19:29.200Now, there are some people out there like you are a MAGA till you die.
00:19:34.420And something has happened in your brain over the past few years where you absolutely refuse to see anything negative about Trump.
00:19:42.220Anything worth criticism, every single every single negative thing that anyone could say about Trump, no matter how factual it is, no matter how constructive the criticism is, like you will find a way to excuse it.
00:21:33.560Okay, we're going to talk about Governor DeWine from Ohio, but I actually wanted to talk about this other story first because it's a little bit more interesting to me.
00:21:42.460And that is this Christianity Today article that has been circulating recently.
00:21:46.960It actually came out in August, but for whatever reason, over the past couple of weeks, conservatives and Christians have been talking about it on X.
00:21:55.800And I think it's probably because Christianity Today recently posted about it.
00:22:40.920Is it pronoun politeness, like Preston Sprinkle says, that I should respect someone's stated pronouns, even if I know it's a woman, I should call it, I should call her he.
00:22:50.760Or if I know it's a man, I should call him she, just to be respectful, just to be polite, just to ingratiate myself to them so that I can be on their same level and then eventually become friends with them and share the gospel with them.
00:23:04.440And then you've got the other side, which is where I am, that says, well, no, we shouldn't lie.
00:23:10.300We're not going to bring someone to the cross of Christ through deception.
00:23:15.260I'm not going to affirm someone's delusion and affirm someone's deep sin and depravity by calling a man she in the hopes that affirming their sin is then going to lead them to the cross.
00:24:22.340They kind of go through the different sides.
00:24:23.960She begins by telling the story of two employees at Huffton University, a Christian school in upstate New York, who were allegedly fired for using pronouns in their email signatures.
00:24:48.480And the students refused to take the pronouns out of their bio because they put them in there so students would feel safe.
00:24:56.720The university denied in statements that they were fired because of that.
00:25:01.280The university ended up telling them that you have to take all extraneous items out of your out of your email signature, including pronouns, including Bible verses, which is just silly.
00:25:12.040I think that university was too scared to say, no, you cannot state your pronouns.
00:25:16.700You can't state your pronouns because that is against what we believe as a Bible believing entity institution.
00:25:23.960So they just said, no, we're just going to take everything out.
00:25:27.220And so this is the attempt of the Christianity Today author to say, look, this is really complicated.
00:25:34.960These student employees, they were just trying to love people.
00:25:38.520They were just trying to get people to feel safe.
00:25:41.520And look, they suffered the wrath of a Christian college just for being kind to their gender questioning.
00:25:47.740That's not the word she uses, but their gender questioning fellow students.
00:25:52.360The article says, while some evangelical Christians don't mind identifying their pronouns, others believe that doing so or referring to someone by a pronoun that doesn't match their birth sex makes inherent ontological claims that should not be glossed over.
00:26:04.120Mark Yarhouse, a psychologist and head of the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute at Wheaton College, there's a lot to unpack there, said this.
00:26:16.720We've reduced this giant conversation.
00:26:19.400It's become so culturally salient that it raises the whole debate of a signature line.
00:26:25.760And Mark Yarhouse is in the camp of so-called pronoun politeness.
00:26:29.600So it is not surprising to me that he has made this claim, that he is on that side.
00:26:37.120Christianity Today writes, the stakes around language and gender are high, which I agree with.
00:26:42.520Some people argue that to not use their self-identified pronouns is to erase their existence.
00:26:47.960For them, pronouns are not just preferred.
00:27:07.440Are pronouns just indicators of how you feel that day?
00:27:10.800We did this whole satirical interview with Kyle Mann where we went back and forth pretending like we are both progressives and going through these ridiculous claims about allowing your pronouns to correspond,
00:27:24.840not just with what you think about your gender, but just what you think about your personality, what you think about your mood that day, how your stomach is feeling, whether you have indigestion or not.
00:27:33.520And obviously, it's a joke, but it's making a serious point that if pronouns are really just about how you feel about your gender, why can't they just be about your feelings in general?
00:27:43.740They're not actually rooted in anything.
00:27:45.440They're rooted in just the ideas that you come up with about yourself that day.
00:27:50.460But that's not, of course, what language is.
00:27:54.440That's not what we see biblically, that these pronouns, this designation of male and female are rooted in biology.
00:28:01.740And so it's while Christianity today tends to give some credence to this idea that not using someone's self-identified pronouns is erasing their existence or at least giving credence to people's feelings that it's erasing their existence.
00:28:18.320The fact of the matter is, is that it's not.
00:28:40.740Here's something that Christianity today says to try to give weight to this argument.
00:28:44.100And when mental health and suicidality are on the line, some advocates like the Minnesota Department of Health say that using a person's correct pronoun saves lives.
00:28:57.020There's no evidence that affirming someone's delusion that has been brought on by, you know, many possible reasons could be true mental health, could be an addiction to porn.
00:29:36.640But now we're supposed to see that person riding around town, that man riding around town on his bike in his dress and say, yes, girl, you look great.
00:29:56.300And now we're told that if we don't do that, if we don't affirm that man riding on the bike at the edge of town in his dress, if we don't call that person a woman and celebrate that person and say she hurt to that person, then their mental health problems are our fault.
00:30:11.320But there's not a case to be made for that.
00:30:29.960This is called empathy bullying, empathy manipulation.
00:30:33.080When in the name of empathy, someone tries to coerce you into affirming their position, their wrong position, their morally factually wrong position.
00:30:41.980And then Christianity does look at the other side, which I do appreciate.
00:30:46.340And what they say about the other side, I think, is so much more compelling.
00:30:51.840Travis Reimer, a pastor in Rhode Island, says, I see this as a creation issue and a gospel issue.
00:30:57.340I believe God's creation is good and designed for human flourishing.
00:31:00.500My call to love my neighbor is to want what's best for them.
00:31:26.740And then the Christianity Today author adds her own assessment after looking at both sides.
00:31:32.520In a sense, much of the disagreement among Christians on whether to use personal pronouns boils down to priorities, which takes precedence, using language that reflects God's immutable design or using language that honors our neighbor's wishes and invites them into deeper relationship.
00:31:45.300Actually, that's a false choice, which is a logical fallacy.
00:31:49.820I mean, if you listen to someone like Rosaria Butterfield's testimony when she was invited into the home of friends and neighbors who did not affirm her sexual choices, who did not affirm her lesbian relationship, but loved her, were kind to her and spoke God's word into her life.
00:32:08.240She eventually was converted to Christianity.
00:32:11.960Laura Perry, who we've had on this podcast before, she was brought back to the Lord after she tried to so-called transition into a man because of the relentless prayers and gospel sharing of her parents, who never called her a man, who never called her by her male name, who never called her by her male pronouns,
00:32:33.980but continued to bring her into their life, into their church life, and pursued her relentlessly.
00:32:45.540So you have to honor someone's wrong pronouns in order to have a relationship and a friendship with them, or you have to honor God and forego that friendship.
00:33:00.840Now, I do think maybe frank conversations are necessary.
00:33:04.980I don't think you have to be necessarily brash to someone.
00:33:09.460But if you are in a position of being in a friendship with someone who identifies as the opposite sex than what they are, then you can have a conversation with them and say,
00:33:19.540look, I love and respect you as an image bearer of God, but I also know that God made you, male or female, and I'm going to refer to you as that.
00:33:26.620And I understand if that makes you mad.
00:38:23.660And I'm actually in my new book that's coming out this fall, and it's about empathy shaming and empathy bullying.
00:38:28.860We have a whole chapter on immigration and what the compassionate and biblical approach to immigration is without falling into these empathy traps.
00:38:37.400And then, of course, they don't like Trump.
00:38:40.240Criminal or not, Trump's case is a moral test for Christians by Russell Moore.
00:38:43.960Trump won't divide the church this time, and that's not necessarily good news, says Russell Moore.
00:39:00.440Christian nationalism cannot save the world by Russell Moore.
00:39:03.180I'm not saying that it can either, by the way, but I just disagree with how they define Christian nationalism.
00:39:10.440Of course, Russell Moore has taken to the pages of Christianity Today to say that the Uganda homosexuality law is un-Christian, un-Christ-like.
00:39:18.460We've talked about why I agree and disagree with that.
00:39:22.080What transgender people need from conservative Christians.
00:39:36.360On legislative bans of gender mutilating surgeries for minors.
00:39:39.220I'm not a fan of legislating around these complex clinical issues on either side.
00:39:44.200So, Mark Yarhouse says that we should not protect children from chemical castration.
00:39:48.780That it should be perfectly legal for doctors to get paid to chemically castrate 10-year-old boys and to give double mastectomies to 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old girls who say that they're confused about their gender because they've been groomed by predators on Tumblr into thinking they're the opposite sex.
00:40:05.360Christian from Wheaton College, Mark Yarhouse, believes that that should be perfectly legal and that these doctors should continue to be incentivized by profit to do this.
00:40:16.320That's a satanic position, Mark Yarhouse.
00:41:09.640He's now signed an executive order banning genital mutilating surgeries for minors days after vetoing that bill that would have done the same.
00:41:18.400So good job raising a respectful ruckus.